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THE TRUE STORY 



OF THE 



Exodus of Israel 



TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF VIEW OF 



THE HISTORY OF MONUMENTAL EGYPT 



COMPILED FROM THE WORK OF 



DR. HENRY BRUGSCH-BEY 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
AND NOTES 

By FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD 



C>. 1380 .^/ 
BOSTON 



LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 
1880 



-^■oV^^vB 



•^ 



'^O 



COPYRIGHT, 

1880, 
By lee and shepard. 

All Rights Reserved, 



Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
19 Spring Lane. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction, 9 

CHAPTER I. 
Origin of the Ancient Egyptians.— Their Neighbors, 21 

CHAPTER 11. 

Division of the Country. — Mental Peculiarities of 
the Egyptians, 28 

CHAPTER III. 
The Chronology of the Pharaonic History, ... 42 

CHAPTER lY. 

Men A, AND the Early Dynasties.— The Pyramids and 
Sphinx, . 47 

CHAPTER Y. 
Art and Architecture in the Twelfth Dynasty, . . 59 

CHAPTER VI. 
Semites and the Egyptians, 64 

CHAPTER YII. 

The Tbie of Foreign Dominion. — Joseph in Egypt, . 95 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Eighteenth Dynasty. — Thutmes III., .... 139 

CHAPTER IX. 

AmENHOTEP III., AND KhUNATEN, THE HERETIC, . . . 153 

CHAPTER X. 
The Pharaoh of the Oppression, 168 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Pharaoh of the Exodus, and a Summary of 
Succeeding History, 183 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Exodus and the Egyptian Monuments. — A Me- 
moir BY Henry Brugsch-Bey, 196 



■•o^ 



APPENDIX. 

The Table of Abydus, 243 

Obelisks of Thutmes III. at Heliopolis, .... 248 

Notes, 253 

Index, 257 



INTRODUCTION. 



" Egypt under the Pharaohs/' by Dr. Henry 
Brugsch-Bey, is prominent among the ablest works 
upon the history and antiquities of the dead mother 
of arts. The author, under the patronage of the 
Egyptian government, spent thirty years in explo- 
ration and in the study of inscriptions, mostly in 
company with the distinguished French savant^ 
Mons. Mariette-Bey, whose numerous discoveries 
have been fortunately complemented by the pro- 
found knowledge and the far-reaching deductions 
of his associate. 

The most important fact established by their 
labors is the verification (in the main) of the chron- 
ological tables of Manetho, and the proof of the 
high antiquity of the kingdom. This antiquity, 
beside which the origin of every other historic 
nation is modern, is made clear by many indepen- 
dent proofs, sometimes jarring as against each other, 
but agreeing in general tendency. The Turin 
papyrus, an enormous list of pharaohs, unfortunately 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION, 

much dilapidated and illegible in places ; the Table 
of Abydus, a smaller list of kings ; a well-authenti- 
cated chart of genealogies of court architects ; the 
various inscriptions upon temple walls ; the portrait 
statues ; and the cartouches of kings (like coats-of- 
arms) sculptured upon contemporary monuments, — 
these are the chief sources of the evidence which 
fixes the age of Mena, founder of the monarchy, 
between forty-four and fifty-seven centuries before 
the Christian era, and which shows a succession of 
pharaohs down to the time of Alexander the Great, 
(b. c. 332.) The architectural remains in Asia and 
in Central America may be older than the pyramids, 
but there are no inscriptions, and the date of Indian 
and of Aztec temples is wholly conjectural. 

The antiquity of Egypt, however, is not its only 
claim upon the veneration of men : literature, the 
arts, and the ideas of morality and religion, so far 
as we know, had their birth in the Nile valley. 
The alphabet, if it was constructed in Phoenicia, 
was conceived in Egypt, or developed from Egyp- 
tian characters. Language, doubtless, is as old as 
man, but the visible symbols of speech were first 
formulated from the hieroglyphic figures. 

The early architecture of the Greeks, the Doric, 
is a development of the Egyptian. Their vases, 
ewers, jewelry, and other ornamental works, are 



INTRODUCTION. H 

copied from the household luxury of the pharaohs. 
The peculiar genius of Egypt, however, appears to 
be repulsive to gay and lively people like the 
French, and the critics of Paris do scant justice to 
the colossal works of the elder pharaohs. Edmund 
About says : " The contemporaries of Sesostris were 
miraculous constructors rather than great architects, 
skilful and expeditious workmen rather than re- 
markable sculptors. From the time of Moses to 
the epoch of the Ptolemies, all the fine arts of the 
country, such as architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
ing, have struck us by their solidity and harshness, 
by the spirit of tradition pushed to the extreme, 
rather than by their originality of genius. It is 
necessary to go back to the first dynasties to meet 
pure and ingenious talent, that hieratic regulations 
were soon to paralyze. A few specimens, well exe- 
cuted, are found here and there ; but one could 
search the whole of Egypt from one end to the 
other, without finding a work to be compared to 
the Temple of Theseus, or to the Venus of Milo. 
The enormous is not the great; knowledge and 
facility bear no relation to genius." 

There is a singular mixture of truth and error in 
this shrewd paragraph. ' Sesostris,' or Ramses the 
Great, was not long before Moses, but the art of 
Egypt culminated in the reign of Thutmes III., 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

in the dynasty preceding. The art of the Greeks 
did not reach its perfection until long after the 
decadence of Egypt. In the time of the Ptolemies 
Egypt was a Greek province. The great works of 
Egypt, as About says, were not the latest ; neither 
were they the earliest. The same is true of Greek 
and of Roman art. In no country has the growth 
of art been continuous and uninterrupted. In 
Egypt, as in Greece, the period of greatness was 
comparatively ancient. The most truthful state- 
ment in the passage quoted is that which mentions 
the influence of the priests in preventing the devel- 
opment of art in sculpture and painting, by requiring 
the use of certain formal and conventional outlines. 
After all, the appreciation of one or another kind of 
art is greatly owing to inherited traits, and to the 
distinctive quality of race. The exquisite perfec- 
tion of a Greek temple will most delight the 
beauty-loving Latin races ; the monumental gran- 
deur of Karnac will most strongly affect the Ger- 
mans, the English, and other Gothic peoples. It is 
the sombre magnificence of a Gothic minster against 
the tawdry splendors of the opera house ; it is the 
glory of Handel's Messiah^ or of Beethoven's Fifth 
Symphony^ against the elegance of La Dame Blanche^ 
or the gayety of La Belle Helene^ of Offenbach. 
Surely M. About can have his choice. 



INTRODUCTIOK 13 

The influence of Egyptian ideas upon the race 
of Israel has a profound interest for the whole 
Christian world. The time of Abraham is properly- 
considered to have been about 1900 B. c* — an 
epoch that, in the minds of unreflecting persons, is 
almost at the beginning of all things. Yet the 
Great Pyramid, built by the first pharaoh of the 
fourth dynasty, had been standing from twelve hun- 
dred to two thousand j^ears before the ' Father of 
the Faithful ' was born. Egypt had a school of 
architecture and sculpture, a recorded literature, re- 
ligious ceremonies, mathematics, astronomy, music, 
agriculture, scientific irrigation, the arts of war, 
ships, commerce, workers in gold, ivory, gems, and 
glass, the appliances of luxury, and the insignia 
of pride, ages before the race of Hebrews had been 
evolved from the fierce Semitic tribes of the desert. 

The Five Books of Moses, the beautiful poem of 
Job, and the other sacred writings of the Jews, 
were then so far in the future ! Ages before the 
giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the ' Book of the 
Dead,' with its high moral precepts, was in the 
possession of every educated Egyptian ; portions of 

* The epoch of Abraham may be fixed by that of Joseph, who 
went to Egypt b. c. 1730. It is possible that from Joseph back to 
Abraham there might have been two hundred and ten years, allow- 
ing seventy years for each intervening life. 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

it, transcribed upon papyrus leaves, were even then, 
in the time of Abraham, securely folded in the 
funeral cerements of kings and priests', laid in their 
*' everlasting habitations." 

The prayers of King Khunaten and of his queen, 
and those of Amenhotep II., all dating long before 
any biblical writing, may be found translated in this 
work of Dr. Brugsch ; and it is but simple truth 
to say, that, in beauty of expression and grandeur of 
thought, and in that piety which is the reaching 
out of the soul after God, no prayers of any people, 
under any form of religion, can be placed before 
them. One or two specimens will be found in the 
following pages. 

We read with a vague awe when the sacred 
writer mentions '^ The God of Abraham, and of 
Isaac, and of Jacob ; " but who was the God of 
Khunaten, whose cry to the deity he could not 
name comes to us from the dim twilight of time ? 

Other literary fragments, translated hj Dr. 
Brugsch, attest the acute observation, the good 
sense, and the moral elevation of w^riters w^ho pre- 
ceded by centuries all others of every other race. 

In this essay we leave out of view the civilization 
of Assyria and of other nations whose art and let- 
ters, so far as we know, have not greatly affected 
our own. 



INTRODUCTION-. 15 

The people of modern Europe are heirs to the 
Romans in literature and the arts. The more 
northern of the nations inherit, also, the laws, 
language, and genius of the Goths. The Romans, 
with their allies and congeners, drew their ideas 
from the Greeks. The Greeks had their original 
learning and art from Egypt, though partly through 
the medium of Phoenicia. Greek historians like 
Herodotus, and philosophers like Pythagoras, went 
to Egypt to study, just as, long after, Roman schol- 
ars went to Athens. The Jews went out from 
Egypt with a modified Semitic speech, and a pure 
Semitic blood ; but they carried with them in the 
person of their great leader " all the wisdom of the 
Eg3'ptians." This is shown by their architecture, 
their religious customs and vestments, and their 
persistent kindred traditions. The nations we have 
mentioned are those that developed and taught the 
rude primitive races that peopled England, and 
whose descendants in all quarters of the globe are 
tending to supreme power in human affairs. 

We see there is suflBcient reason for the absorbing 
interest felt by all thoughtful men in the annals of 
Egypt. Wonderful developments have taken place 
since the greatest of the pharaohs wore the double 
crown, but the germ of all future civilizations was 
in that powerful people. The thinking and the 



16 INTRODUCTION, 

living of all mankind have been moulded by the 
influences of Moses and Jesus ; and both were of 
the race whose early lessons were received with 
stripes from Egyptian masters. The hieratic sym- 
bols are uncouth to modern eyes, but they con- 
tained the possibilities of Genesis and the Iliad, of 
the Psalms, the -zEneid, and the Inferno, — of Pro- 
metheus, Hamlet, and Paradise Lost. 

** Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
As the best gem upon her zone ; " 

but in the thought that planned the Hall of Col- 
umns, or sculptured the rock temple of Amon, was 
involved the conception of all Athenian and all 
Roman fanes. 

We hail, therefore, the continued results of ex- 
plorations in this wonderful land, the remote but 
undoubted source of letters and morals, sciences 
and arts. Every newly-found inscription helps to 
confirm or correct a date or a tradition, and to 
make certain the long and dim tract of its history. 

The difficulties that have surrounded the delvers 
in buried cities can scarcely be over-estimated. 
Suppose that, by some convulsion of nature, or by 
some mischance in war, the venerable abbey of 
Westminster with its historic monuments had been 
levelled to the ground, and the stones lay in 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

heaps in the cloisters, or about Whitehall, or along 
the Thames embankment ; — suppose, after twenty 
centuries had covered these stones with their accu- 
mulations, and after spoliators had built some of 
them into modern edifices, that a new Mariette or 
Brugsch should excavate and measure and decipher, 
and should attempt to reconstruct the towers, nave, 
transepts, chapels, choir, and tombs ; — think of the 
confusion of arches and rosaces, pinnacles and col- 
umns, of headless statues and overturned pedestals, 
of half-effaced inscriptions and fragmentary dates ! 
Conceive what it would be to put in order the 
various parts of the building, and to identify its 
centuries of memorials ! Such, and so broken and 
dispersed, are the remains of the fabric of the 
Egyptian state. So, through the Nile valley, and 
around Thebes and Memphis, Zoan-Tanis and 
Pitom, Thinis, Philse, Bubastis and Abydus, lie the 
almost irrecoverable fragments of monumental 
Egypt, too many of them mere disjointed stones. 
Upon such materials the labors of Egyptologists 
have been patiently spent. The gaps in chronology 
are still enormous and deplorable, due to the numer- 
ous wars which, age after age, desolated the coun- 
try and destroyed its statues and public buildings ; 
but the results are still grand, and fully repay the 
toil and money spent in the search. 
2 



18 INTRODUCTION, 

Much remains to be done ; and it is to be hoped 
that future viceroj^s may be as intelligent and lib- 
eral as Ismail Pacha, to whom so much honor is 
due, and that future archaeologists may be as untir- 
ing, as keen and as just, as the author whose work 
is under consideration. 

This volume contains so much of Dr. Brugsch's 
work as relates to the settlement of the family of 
Jacob, and to their exodus as a people under Moses. 
To enable the reader to understand the historic 
connection, the editor has made a brief summary 
of leading events, and an account of the most enai- 
nent of the pharaohs. Some account is given of 
the early races, also of the royal residences, and 
of the Hyksos, under the last of whom Joseph was 
the favorite minister. As far as is consistent with 
fluency in narration, all these topics are presented 
in the author's own words. 

The original work is large and expensive, and its 
chief interest to general readers, and especially to 
biblical students, lies in the contact of the Jewish 
with the Egyptian race. Many people might be 
indifferent as to the history of Ramses the Great, 
unless they knew that it was his daughter, the 
Princess Meri, who found the infant Moses. Aahmes 
would be a meaningless name, unless we knew that 
he overthrew and seated himself on the throne of 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

the pharaoh who had been the patron of Joseph. 
Mineptah would be passed by, unless we were told 
that he was the pharaoh of the Exodus, upon whom 
the judgments of heaven fell, and who was drowned 
with his host in pursuing his slaves. 

It will be interesting, even to the firmest believer 
in the literal inspiration of the Books of Moses, to 
know that, although Egyptian history is silent with 
regard to the Hebrews and their miraculous escape 
from bondage, the Scripture narrative, when rightly 
interpreted, is found to accord with known events 
and dates, and with the permanent facts of geog- 
raphy. Translators and commentators have dark- 
ened and perplexed the sacred record ; and clerical 
chronologists have made havoc with arithmetic and 
with science and history in fixing the unknowable 
anno mundi as a point of reckoning ; but in the 
new light shed upon the story of the Exodus by 
Dr. Bru2:sch it comes out with wonderful vivid- 
ness. 

The long sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt was 
productive of great and lasting results. Had they 
remained outside the barrier of Shur among the 
Shasu, their descendants to-day would have been 
like the Bedouins, dwellers in the black tents of the 
desert. Centuries of oppression consolidated them, 
and made them a hardy and warlike people. They 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

learned the sciences and arts of their oppressors; 
they built upon their customs and laws. They 
came to have a proper pride in an unmixed lineage ; 
and they carried into Syria the certainty of a one 
God, — a God long before dreamed of by Egyptian 
priests and kings. Other influences have doubtless 
aided, but it was chiefly the primal impulse from 
Egypt that made them a leading race ; and that it 
has not yet spent its force is shown by their de- 
served prominence in literature, music, finance, and 
statesmanship. Familiar as the sacred story ought 
to be, it is thought best to copy the passages of 
scripture that refer to Joseph and to Moses, that 
they may be considered with Dr. Brugsch's irre- 
sistible demonstration. 

Feancis H, Underwood. 

Boston, Feb. 2, 1880. 



THE TRUE STORY 

OF 

THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 

CHAPTER L 

OEIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. — THEIR 
NEIGHBOES. 

Although, in so long a space of time as sixty 
centuries, events and revolutions of great historical 
importance must of necessity have completely al- 
tered the political state of Egypt, yet, notwith- 
standing all, the old Egyptian race has undergone 
but little change ; for it still preserves to this day 
those distinctive features of physiognomy, and those 
peculiarities of manners and customs, which have 
been handed down to us, by the united testimony 
of the monuments and the accounts of the ancient 
classical writers, as the hereditary characteristics of 
this people. 

The forefathers of the Egyptians cannot be reck- 
oned among the African races, properly so called. 
The form of the skull — so at least the elder school 

(21) 



22 THE TRUE STORY OF 

teaches — as well as the proportions of the several 
parts of the body, as these have been determined 
from examining a great number of mummies, are 
held to indicate a connection with the Caucasian 
family of mankind. The Egyptians, together with 
some other nations, form, as it would seem, a third 
branch of that race, namely, the family called Cush- 
ite, which is distinguished by special characters from 
the Pelasgian and the Semitic families. Whatever 
relations of kindred may be found always to exist 
between these great races of mankind, thus much 
maj^ be regarded as certain, that the cradle of the 
Egyptian people must be sought in the interior of 
the Asiatic quarter of the world. In the -earliest 
ages of humanity, far beyond all historical remem- 
brance, the Egyptia^ns, for reasons unknown .to us, 
left the soil of their primeval home, took their way 
towards the setting sun, and finally crossed that 
bridge of nations, the Isthmus of Suez, to find a 
new fatherland on the favored banks of the holy 
Nile. 

Comparative philology, in its turn, gives powerful 
support to this hypothesis. The Egyptian language 
— which has been preserved on the monuments of 
the oldest time, as well as in the late-Christian manu- 
scripts of the Copts, the successors of the people of 
the pharaohs — shows in no way any trace of a 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 23 

derivation and descent from the African families of 
speech. On the contrary, the primitive roots and 
the essential elements of the Egyptian grammar 
point to such an intimate connection with the Indo- 
Germanic and Semitic languages, that it is almost 
impossible to mistake the close relations which 
formerly prevailed between the Egyptians and the 
races called Indo-Germanic and Semitic. 

We will not pass over in silence a Greek account, 
remarkable because of its origin, according to which 
the primitive abode of the Egyptian people is to 
be sought in Ethiopia. According to an opinion 
strongly advocated by ancient writers, and even 
subscribed to by some modern historians little 
conversant with the facts of the case, the honor 
of first founding Egyptian civilization should be 
awarded to a society of priests from the city of 
Meroe. Descending the course of the Nile — so 
runs the story — they are supposed to have settled 
on the territory of the later city of Thebes, and 
there to have founded the first state with a theo- 
cratic form of government. Although, on the 
ground of the ancient tradition, this view has been 
frequently repeated in the historical works of sub- 
sequent times, it is nevertheless stamped with the 
mark of error, as it dispenses with any actual proof. 
It is not to the Ethiopian priests that the Egyptian 



24 THE TRUE STORY OF 

empire owes its origin, its form of government, and 
the characteristic stages of its high civilization ; but 
much rather was it the Egj-ptians that first ascended 
the river, to found in Ethiopia temples, cities, and 
fortified places, and to diffuse the blessings of a civ- 
ilized state among the rude dark-colored population. 
Whichever of the Greek historians concocted the 
marvellous fiction of the first Ethiopic settlement 
in Egypt was led into the mistake by a confusion 
with the influence which Ethiopia exercised on the 
fortunes of Egypt during a comparatively late pe- 
riod, and by carrying this back, without further 
consideration, into the prehistoric age. 

Supposing, for a moment, that Egypt had owed 
her civil and social development to Ethiopia, noth- 
ing should be more probable than the presumption 
of our finding monuments of the highest antiquity 
in that primitive home of the Egyptians, while in 
going down the river we ought to light only upon 
monuments of a later age. Strange to say, the 
whole number of the buildings in stone, as yet 
known and examined, which were erected on both 
sides of the river at the bidding of the Egyptian 
and Ethiopian kings, furnish the incontrovertible 
proof, that the long series of temples, cities, sepul- 
chres, and monuments in general, exhibit a distinct 
chronological order, of which the oldest starting- 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 25 

point is found in the Pyramids, at the apex of the 
Delta, south of the bifurcation of the great river. 
As, in proceeding southwards, we approach nearer 
and nearer to the rapids and cataracts of the Upper 
Nile, right into the heart of the later Ethiopian 
kingdom, the more does the stamp of antiquity van- 
ish from the whole body of extant monuments ; the 
more evident is the decline of art, of taste, and of 
beauty. In short, the Ethiopian style of art — so 
far as the monuments still preserved allow us to 
form a judgment — is destitute of all independent 
character. The first view of the Ethiopian monu- 
ments at once carries the conviction, that we can 
recognize no special quality beyond the rudest con- 
ception and the most imperfect execution of a style 
of art originally Egyptian. The most clumsy imita- 
tion of Egyptian attainments in all that relates to 
science and the arts, appears as the acme of the 
intellectual progress and the artistic development 
of Ethiopia. 

According to the accounts of the Greek and Ro- 
man writers who had occasion to visit Egypt and to 
have close intercourse with the people of the coun- 
try, the Egyptians themselves held the belief, that 
they were the original inhabitants of the land. The 
fertile valley of the Nile, according to their opinion, 
formed the heart and centre of the whole world. 



26 THE TRUE STORY OF 

To the west of it dwelt the groups of tribes which 
bore the general name of Ribu, or Libu, the ances- 
tors of those Libyans who are so often mentioned in 
the historical works and geographical descriptions 
of the ancients. Inhabiting the north coasts of 
Africa, they extended their abodes eastward as far 
as the districts along the Canopic branch of the 
Nile, now called that of Rosetta, or Rashid. From 
the evidence of the monuments, they belonged to 
a light-colored race, with blue eyes and blond or 
red hair. According to the very remarkable re- 
searches of the French general Faidherbe, they may 
have been the earliest representatives of that race 
(perhaps of Celts ?) who migrated from the north 
of Europe to Africa, making their way through the 
three Mediterranean peninsulas, and gradually tak- 
ing possession of the Libyan coasts. 

Turning our eyes to the east, across the narrow 
Isthmus of Suez, we meet on the ancient soil the 
people of that great nation, which the Egyptians 
designated by the name of Amu. Whether we pre- 
fer to explain this name by the help of the Semitic 
languages, in which it has the general significance 
of 'people,' or whether we resort to the Egyptian 
vocabulary, in which ame (more usually ameii) has 
the meaning of 'herdsman,' — in either case, this 
one thing is certain, that the Egyptians of the pha- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 27 

raonic age used the term in a somewhat contemptu- 
ous sense. These Amu \Yere the Pagans, the Kaf- 
firs, or ' infidels ' of their time. In the colored 
representations they are distinguished chiefly by 
their yellow or yellowish-brown complexion, while 
their dress has sometimes a great simplicity, bat 
sometimes shows a taste for splendor and richness 
in the choiceness of the cut and the colored designs 
woven into the fabric. In these Amu scientific re- 
search has long since perceived the representatives 
of the great Semitic family of nations, though, in 
our own opinion, the same name includes also many 
peoples and families, who appear to have but a 
slight relationship with the pure Semitic race. 

The most remarkable nations among the Amu, 
who appear in the course of Egyptian history as 
commanding respect by their character and their 
deeds, are the Kheta, the Khar (or Khal), and the 
Ruten (or Luten). But moreover it is to be espe- 
cially remarked, as a fact establislied beyond dis- 
pute, that even in the most glorious times of the 
Egyptian monarchy the Amu were settled as perma- 
nent inhabitants in the neighborhood of the present 
lake Menzaleh. A great number of towns and vil- 
lages, canals and pools, in that region, formerly bore 
names unmistakably Semitic. 



28 THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHAPTER II. 

DIVISION OF THE COUNTRY. — MENTAL PECULIAR- 
ITIES OE THE EGYPTIANS. 

Egypt is designated in the old inscriptions, as 
well as in the books of the later Christian Egyp- 
tians, by a word which signifies ' the black land,' 
and which is read in the Egyptian language Kem, or 
Kami. The ancients had early remarked that the 
cultivable land of Egypt was distinguished by its 
dark and almost black color, and certainly this 
peculiar color of their soil suggested to the old 
Egyptians the name of the black land. This name 
and its derivation receive a further corroboration 
from the fact, that the neighboring region of the 
Arabian desert bore the name of Tesher, or ' the 
red land,' in contradistinction to the black land 
(the A'in of the monuments, ^an in Pliny, an ap- 
pellation of the nome afterwards called the Heroo- 
politan). On countless occasions the king is men- 
tioned in the inscriptions as ^ the lord of the black 
country and of the red country,' in order to show 
that his rule extended oyer cultivated and unculti- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 29 

vated Egypt in the wider sense of the word. We 
must take this opportunity of stating that the 
Egyptians designated themselves simply as the 
people of the black land, and that the inscriptions, 
so far as we know, have handed down to us no 
other appellation as the distinctive name of the 
Egyptian people. 

Ancient Egypt, most commonly mentioned in 
general as ' the double land,' consisted of two 
great divisions, which, after their situation, were 
called in contrast with each other the land of the 
South and the land of the North, as is attested by 
the inscriptions. The first corresponds to that part 
of Egypt which, following the Greek name, we now 
know as Upper Egypt, and which the Arabs of the 
present day call by the appellation of Said. The 
land of Upper Egypt began on the south at the 
ivory-island-city of Elephantine, which lay opposite 
to Syene (the modern trading-town of Assouan), on 
the right bank of the river ; and its northern boun- 
dary reached to the neighborhood of the Memphian 
district on the left bank of the holy river. North- 
ern Egypt comprehended the remaining part of the 
land, called the Low country, the land of Behereh 
of the Arabs, the Delta of the Greek writers. 
This division, which exists just as much in our 
own day as it did in the most ancient times, is 



30 THE TRUE STORY OF 

neither accidental nor arbitrarj^ ; for it is founded 
not only on a local difference in the respective dia- 
lects of the inhabitants, but on the marked distinc- 
tion of habits, manners, and customs, which divides 
the Egyptians in the north and the south from 
one another. Already in the thirteenth century 
before our era, this difference of speech is proved 
by documentary evidence. 

The land of Egypt resembles a small narrow gir- 
dle, divided in the midst by a stream of water, and 
hemmed in on both sides by long chains of moun- 
tains. On the right side of the stream, to the east, 
the chain of hills called Arabian accompany the 
river for its whole length ; on the opposite, the 
western side, the low hills of the Libyan desert 
extend in the same direction with the river from 
south to north, up to the shore of the Mediterra- 
nean Sea. The river itself was designated by the 
Greeks and Romans by the name of Neilos, or 
Nilus. Although this word is still retained in the 
Arabic language as Nil, with the special meaning 
of ' inundation,' yet its origin is not to be sought 
in the old Egyptian language ; but, as has been 
lately suggested with great probability, it is to be 
derived from the Semitic word Nahar, or Nahal, 
which has the general signification of ' river.' 
From its bifurcation south of the ancient city of 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 31 

Memphis, the river divided itself into three great 
arms, which watered the Lower Egyptian flat lands 
which spread out in the shape of the Greek letter 
^ (Delta), and with four smaller arms formed the 
seven famous mouths of the Nile. 

The Egyptian districts, called by "the Greeks 
Nomes Qnoiiol^^ which in the upper land lay on both 
sides of the river, comprehended in the inner part 
of the Delta larger circuits, which were surrounded 
like islands by the arms of the Nile and their canals. 
Beyond these island nomes other districts extended 
on the Arabian and Libyan sides of the Lower 
Egyptian region of the stream. They are called in 
the lists the Western and Eastern nomes. This 
special division of the upper and lower countries 
into the districts called Nomes is of the highest 
antiquity, since we already find on the monuments 
of the fourth dynasty some nomes mentioned by 
their names, as well as some towns with the nomes 
to which they belonged. Upper Egypt contained 
twenty-two nomes, Lower Egypt twenty, so that 
there was a total for all Egypt of forty-two nomes. 

Each district had its own capital, which was at the 
same time the seat of the captain for the time being, 
whose office and dignity passed by inheritance, ac- 
cording to the old Egyptian laws, from the father 
to the eldest grandson on the mother's side. The 



32 THE TRUE STORY OF 

capital formed likewise the central point of the par- 
ticular divine worship of the district which belonged 
to it. The sacred lists of the nomes have handed 
down to us the names of the temple of the chief deity, 
of the priests and priestesses, of the holy trees, and 
also the names of the town-harbor of the holy canal, 
the cultivated land and the land which was only 
fruitful during the inundation, and much other in- 
formation, in such completeness that we are in a 
position, from the indications contained in these lists, 
to form the most exact picture of each Egyptian 
nome in all its details, almost without any gaps. 

There are three districts, above all others, which in 
the course of Egyptian history maintained the bril- 
liant reputation of being the seats of government for 
the land : in Lower Egypt the nomes of Memphis 
and Heliopolis (On), and in Upper Egypt that of 
Thebes. 

The old inhabitants of Egypt, like their descend- 
ants of to-day who inhabit the ^ black country,' ob- 
tained nourishment and increase from their favored 
soil. The wealth and prosperity of the country and 
its inhabitants were founded on agriculture and the 
breeding of cattle. Tillage, favored by the prover- 
bial fertility of the soil, had its fixed seasons regu- 
lated by the annual inundations. The special care 
already bestowed in the remotest antiquity on that 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 33 

important part of agricultural industry, the breeding 
and tending of cattle, is set in the clearest light by 
the evidence of the monuments. The walls of the 
sepulchral chapels are covered with thousands of 
bas-reliefs and their explanatory inscriptions, which 
preserve for us the most abundant disclosures re- 
specting the labors of the field and the rearing of 
cattle, as practised by the old Egyptians. In them, 
also, navigation plays an important part, as the sole 
means of transport for long distances. In ancient 
times, as in our own day, commerce and travelling 
were carried on upon the Nile and its canals. On 
the chief festivals of the Egyptian year the pharaohs 
themselves did not disdain to sail along the sacred 
river in the gorgeous royal ship, in order to perform 
mystic rites in special honor of agriculture. The 
priests regarded the plough as a most sacred imple- 
ment, and their faith held that the highest happiness 
of man, after the completion of his pilgrimage here 
below, would consist in tilling the Elysian fields of 
the subterranean god Osiris, in feeding and tending 
his cattle, and navigating the breezy water of the 
other world in slender skiffs. The husbandman, the 
shepherd, and the boatman, were in fact the first 
founders of the gentle manners- — the honored au- 
thors of that most ancient peaceful life — of the peo- 
ple who flourished in the blessed valley of the Nile. 
3 



84 THE TRUE STORY OF 

We cannot close this chapter without still taking 
an inquiring look at the peculiar mental endow- 
ments of the ancient Egyptians, about which the 
information of the monuments will be of course our 
faithful guides. There are not wanting very learned 
and intelligent persons — not excepting some who 
have won an illustrious name in historical inquiries — 
who teach us to regard the Egyptians as a people 
reflective, serious, and reserved, very religious, occu- 
pied only with the other world, and caring nothing 
or very little about this lower life ; just as if they 
had been the Trappists of antiquity. But could it 
have been possible — we ask with wonder and be- 
wilderment — that the fertile and bounteous land, 
that the noble river which waters its soil, that the 
pure and smiling heaven, that the beaming sun of 
Egypt, could have produced a people of living 
mummies and of sad philosophers, a people who only 
regarded this life as a burden to be thrown off as 
soon as possible ? No ! Travel through the land 
of the old pharaohs ; look at the pictures carved or 
painted on the walls of the sepulchral chapels ; read 
the words cut in stone or written with black ink on 
the fragile papyrus ; and you will soon be obliged to 
form another judgment on the Egyptian philoso- 
phers. No people could be gayer, more lively, of 
more childlike simplicity, than those old Egyptians, 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 35 

who loved life with all their heart, and found the 
deepest joy in their very existence. Far from long- 
ing for death, they addressed to the host of the holy 
gods the prayer to preserve and lengthen life, if 
possible, to the ' most perfect old age of one hundred 
and ten years.' They gave themselves up to the 
pleasures of a merry life. The song, and dance, and 
flowing cup, cheerful excursions to the meadows and 
the papyrus marshes — to hunt with bow and arrow 
or sling, or to fish with spear and hook — heightened 
the enjoyment of life, and were the recreations of 
the nobler classes after work was done. In connec- 
tion with this merry disposition, humorous jests and 
lively sallies of wit, often passing the bounds of 
decorum, characterized the people from age to age. 
They were fond of biting jests and smart innuen- 
dos ; and free social talk found its way even into 
the silent chambers of the tomb. But the propensity 
to pleasure was a dangerous trap for the youth of 
the old Egyptian schools, and the judicious teachers 
had much need to keep a curb on the young peo- 
ple. If admonition utterlj^ failed, the chastising 
stick came into play, for the sages of the country 
believed that ' The ears of a youth are on his 
back.' 

The lowest classes of the people, 'the mob,' as 
the inscriptions call them, were occupied with hus- 



36 THE TRUE STORY OF 

bandiy, the breeding of cattle, navigation, fishing, 
and the different branches of the most simple in- 
dustries. From' a very early period stone was 
wrought according to the rules of an advanced 
skill ; and metals, namely, gold, silver, copper, iron 
(at first meteoric iron), were melted and wrought 
into works of art, or tools and implements; wood 
and leather were formed into a great variety of 
valuable objects ; glass was cast ; flax was spun and 
woven into stuffs ; ropes were twisted ; baskets and 
mats of rushes were plaited ; and on the round 
potter's wheel great and small vessels were formed 
by clever artists from the rich clay of the Nile, and 
baked in the fiery furnace. Sculptors and painters 
found profitable work among the rich patrons of art 
at the court of the pharaohs ; and a whole world 
of busy artisans worked for daily wages under the 
bright blue sky of Egypt. 

But all these, the humble followers of the earliest 
human art industry, were held ' in bad odor,' and 
the lowest scribe in the service of a great man 
looked down with the greatest contempt on the 
toiling, laboring people. It was esteemed better to 
be a servant in the house of the pharaoh, and to 
bustle about in the service of their masters in the 
halls of the noble families. Though themselves 
children of the people, the class of servants found 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 37 

help and protection from their lords, and had a share 
in the honor of the court. Spoiled by the plenty, 
luxury, and extravagance of splendid life, they 
knew not the painful lot of the workman. Death 
itself did not grudge the servants a part with the 
owners of the gorgeous sepulchres ; for in the cham- 
bers of the dead, the deep pits of which hid in the 
place of honor the embalmed bodies of the noble 
masters, room was reserved by the artist's hand for 
the memory of the faithful servant. But too obedi- 
ent to the orders of their lords, the servants held in 
slight regard the ' stinking ' masses of the people, 
and abhorred the society of the ' miserable ' traders 
and workmen. 

Returning from successful campaigns abroad to 
the banks of the holy river, the princes and cap- 
tains of the warriors, in the course of time, brought 
a great number of prisoners into the country, as 
booty of war : king's children, nobles, and common 
people of foreign origin. Some as hostages, others 
as slaves, inhabited the towns of their Egyptian 
lords ; those not noble being promoted to the rank 
of domestic servants, or condemned to work in the 
fields with the common herd of the people. Dark- 
colored inhabitants of the southern regions of the 
Upper Nile, and light-colored Canaanites, armed 
with sticks, attended the great men on their jour- 



38 THE TRUE STORY OF 

neys as guards of honor, or, in the service of the 
court, enforced respect in an office like that of the 
cawasses of our day. 

The noble class of the Egyptian people had noth- 
ing in common with the vulgar ' mob ; ' for they 
derived their origin, for the most part, from the 
royal house, the nearest branches of which, the 
king's children and grandchildren (Sutenrekh), 
were held in high honor and respect. To them 
were committed the highest offices of the court, 
to which they were attached by abundant rewards 
from the pharaoh's ever open hand. The nobles 
held as their hereditary possessions villages and 
tracts of land, with the people thereto belonging, 
bands of servants, and numerous herds of cattle. 
To their memory, after their decease^ were dedicated 
those splendid tombs, the remains of which, on the 
raised plain of the Libyan desert, or in the caverns 
of the Egyptian hills, are still searched with admiring 
wonder by later ages down to our own day. Am- 
bition and arrogant pride form a remarkable feature 
in the spirit of the old dwellers on the Nile. Work- 
man competed with workman, husbandman with hus- 
bandman, official with official, to outvie his fellow, 
and to appropriate the favor and praises of the 
noble lords. In the schools, where the poor scribe's 
child sat on the same bench beside the offspring of 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 39 

the rich, to be trained in discipline and wise learn- 
ing, the masters knew how by timely words to goad 
on the lagging diligence of the ambitious scholars, 
by holding out to them the future reward which 
awaited youths skilled in knowledge and letters. 
Thus the slumbering spark of self-esteem was 
stirred to a flame in the youthful breast, and emu- 
lation was stimulated among the boys. The clever 
son of the poor man, too, might hope hj his knowl- 
edge to climb the ladder of the higher offices ; for 
neither his birth nor position in life raised any 
barrier, if only the youth's mental power justified 
fair hopes for the future. In this sense, the 
restraints of caste did not exist, and neither descent 
nor family hampered the rising career of the clever. 
Many a monument consecrated to the memory of 
some nobleman gone to his long home, who during 
life had held high rank at the court of the pharaoh, 
is decorated with the simple but laudatory inscrip- 
tion, ' His ancestors were unknown people.' 

It is a satisfaction to avow that the training and 
instruction of the young interested the Egj^ptians 
in the highest degree ; for they fully recognized in 
this the sole means of elevating their national life, 
and of fulfilling the high civilizing mission which 
Providence seemed to have placed in their hands. 
But above all things they regarded justice, and 



40 THE TRUE STORY OF 

virtue had the highest price in their eyes. The 
law which ordered them ' to pray to the gods, to 
honor the dead, to give bread to the hungry, water 
to the thirsty, clothing to the naked,' reveals to us 
one of the finest qualities of the old Egyptian char- 
acter — pity towards the unfortunate. The forty- 
two commandments of the Egyptian religion, which 
are contained in the one hundred and twenty-fifth 
chapter of the 'Book of the Dead,' are in no way 
inferior to the precepts of Christianity; and, in read- 
ing the old Egyptian inscriptions concerning moral- 
ity and the fear of God, we are tempted to believe 
that the Jewish lawgiver Moses modelled his teach- 
ings on the patterns given by the old Egyptian 
sages. 

But the medal has its reverse side. The fore- 
fathers of the Egyptians were not free from vices 
and failings, which we cannot pass over in silence 
without exposing ourselves to the reproach of flat- 
tery at the expense of truth. Hatred, envy, cun- 
ning, intrigue, combined with an overweening senti- 
ment of pride, opposition, and perversity, added to 
avarice and cruelty — such is the long series of 
hereditary faults which history reveals to us among 
the Egyptians by unnumbered examples in the 
course of centuries. We must especially beware 
of cherishing the belief that the rule of the pha- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 41 

raohs opened to the inhabitants of the land the 
gates of a terrestrial paradise. The people suffered 
and endured under the blows of their oppressors, 
and the stick settled the dispatch of business 
between the peasant and the tax-gatherer. We 
need but glance at the gigantic masses of the 
pyramids ; they tell more emphatically than living 
speech or written words of the tears and the pains, 
the sufferings and miseries, of a whole population, 
which was condemned to erect these everlasting 
monuments of pharaonic vanity. Three thousand 
years were not able to efface the curse resting on 
their memory. When Herodotus, about the mid- 
dle of the fifth century before Christ, visited the 
field of the great pyramids of Gizeh, the Egyptians 
told him of the imprecations wrung from their un- 
happy forefathers, and they would not, from abhor- 
rence, so much as utter the names of the kings 
who constructed the two highest pyramids, whom 
we now know to have been the pharaohs Khufu 
and Khafra. 



42 THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE PHARAONIC HISTORY. 

If the reader's curiosity leads him to an inquiry 
concerning the epochs of time already fixed in the 
history of the pharaohs, and to a critical examina- 
tion of the chronological tables thus far composed 
by scholars, he must be strangely impressed by the 
conflict of most diverse views in the computations 
of the most modern school. As to the era, for 
example, when the first pharaoh, Mena, mounted 
the throne, the German Egyptologers have attempt- 
ed to fix it at the following epochs: 





B. C. 




B.C. 


Boeckh, . 


. 5702 


Lauth, . - . 


. 4157 


linger, 


. 5613 


Lepsius, . 


. 3892 


Brugsch, . 


. 4455 


Bunsen, . 


. 3623 



The calculations in question are based on the ex- 
tracts that have been preserved from a work by the 
Egyptian priest Manetho on the history of Egypt. 
That learned man had then at his command the 
annals of his country's history, which were pre- 
served in the temples, and from them, the best 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 43 

and most accurate sources, he derived the mate- 
rials for his work, composed in the Greek lan- 
guage, on the history of the ancient Egyptian 
dynasties. His book, which is now lost, contained 
a general review of the kings of the land, divided 
into thirty dynasties, arranged in the order of their 
names, with the lengths of their reigns, and the 
total duration of each dynasty. Though this inval- 
uable work was little known and certainly but little 
regarded by the historians of the old classical age, 
large extracts were made from it by some of the 
ecclesiastical writers. In process of time the copy- 
ists, either by error or designedly, corrupted the 
names and the numbers, and thus we only possess 
at the present day the ruins instead of the com- 
plete building. The truth of the original, and the 
authenticity of his sources, was first proved by the 
deciphering of the Egyptian writing. And thus 
the Manethonian list of the kings served, and still 
serves, as a guide for assigning to the royal names 
read on the monuments their place in the dynasties, 
as, on the other hand, the monuments have enabled 
us with certainty to restore to their correct orthog- 
raphy many of the kings' names which have been 
corrupted in the Manethonian lists. The very 
thorough investigations, to which learned experts 
have subjected the succession of the pharaohs and 



44 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the chronological order of the dynasties, have shown 
the absolute necessity of supposing in the list of 
Manetho contemporary and collateral dynasties, and 
thus of diminishing considerably the total duration 
of the thirty dynasties. Notwithstanding all these 
discoveries, the figures are in a deplorable state. 
From the nature of the calculation, based on the 
exact determination of the regnal years of the 
kings, every number which is rectified necessarily 
changes the results of the whole series of numbers. 
It is only from the beginning of the twenty-sixth 
dynasty that the chronology is founded on data 
which leave little to be desired as to their exacti- 
tude. 

Assuming, according to the well-known calcula- 
tion of the father of history, Herodotus, the round 
number of a century for three consecutive human 
lives, we possess a means of determining approxi- 
mately the periods of time which have elapsed, on 
the one hand, from king Mena to the end of the 
twelfth dynasty, and again from the beginning of 
the eighteenth dynasty to the end of the twenty- 
sixth. 

The new Table of Abydus, discovered eleven 
years ago in a corridor of the temple of Seti I., at 
Harabat-el-Madfouneh, gives a succession of sixty- 
five kings from Mena, the founder of the line, down 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 45 

to the last reign of the twelfth dynasty. To these 
sovereigns therefore would be assigned a period of 
^ X 100 = 2166 years, leaving the fractional re- 
mainder out of the account. 

If we were to believe the Table of Abydus alone, 
the princes of the twelfth dynasty would have had 
the pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty for their 
immediate successors, without any break or inter- 
regnum. This would be in accordance with the 
fact perceived by the acuteness of Mariette-Bey, 
that the old Egyptian proper names of the persons 
of the twelfth, and especially of the eleventh dy- 
nasty, recur in the same forms on the monuments 
of the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty ; 
and further, that at these two periods of Egyptian 
history the form and ornaments of the coffins are 
so alike as to be undistinguishable. Here we have 
a remarkable enigma, for the solution of which we 
do not yet possess the requisite data. 

If we admit, according to the evidence of the 
Table of Abydus, the sudden transition from the 
twelfth to the eighteenth dynasty, the historical 
beginning of the Egyptian empire would fall about 
the year 3724 B. c, namely, two thousand one hun- 
dred and sixty-six years before 1658 B. c. But if, 
on the other hand, we assume in round numbers 
five hundred years as the intermediate space of 



46 THE TRUE STORY OF 

time which divides the end of the twelfth from the 
beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, the result 
would be that. Mena ascended the throne of Horus 
five hundred years before the year 3724, that is, in 
4244 B. c. 

Had the Turin papyrus been preserved to us in 
its entire state ; had we possessed the complete list 
of the historical kings of the Egyptian empire, we 
should probably have been in a position to mould 
into a perfect shape even the most ancient part 
of Egyptian history, with the dates belonging to it. 
But, as the case stands at present, no mortal man 
possesses the means of removing the difficulties 
which are inseparable from the attempt to restore 
the original list of kings from the fragments of the 
Turin papyrus. 

The chronological table of the history of the 
Egyptian kingdom, which is given at the end of 
this work (Appendix A), is founded on the prin- 
ciples above explained, as far as dates are con- 
cerned, and is only presented to the reader with 
the extremest caution. I would make the general 
remark, that the numbers of years assigned to the 
dynasties and to the individual pharaohs claim 
merelj" the value of an approximation, but never- 
theless they do not on the average exceed their 
actual ages obtained from the monuments. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 47 



CHAPTER IV. 

MENA, AND THE EAELY DYNASTIES. — THE 
PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX. 

Mena, the founder of the monarchy, whose name 
signifies ' the constant,' reigned first at Tini, a little 
town of which scarce a trace now remains. Ac- 
cording to tradition, he also built the larger capital 
of Memphis, having first made a site for the city 
by turning the course of the Nile. The Egyptian 
name is Mennofer, ' the good place.' The ruins of 
this city were well preserved down to the thir- 
teenth century, at which time they were described 
in glowing phrases by an Arabian physician, Abd- 
ul-Latif. But the stones were transported to Cairo 
and used for the construction of mosques and pal- 
aces. This city, next to Thebes, holds a large place 
in Egyptian history. It was the first great seat of 
power, and for a long time the religious metropolis. 
Along the far-stretching margin of the desert, from 
Abu-Roash to Meidum, lay in silent tranquillity the 
necropolis of Memphis with its wealth of tombs, 
overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the 



48 THE TRUE STORY OF 

pyramids, which rose high above the monuments 
of the noblest among the noble families, who, even 
after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet 
of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of 
the third, fourth, and fifth dynasties are here bur- 
ied ; but their memory has been preserved by pic- 
tures and writings on the walls of the sacrificial 
chambers built over their tombs. From this source 
flows the stream of tradition which carries us back 
to the time and to the soil of the oldest kingdom in 
the land. If this countless number of tombs had 
been preserved to us, it would have been an easy 
task to reconstruct before our eyes, in uninter- 
rupted succession, the genealogy of the kings and 
of the noble lines related to them. Fate, however, 
has not granted this ; for their monuments, names, 



^5 



and deeds are buried and forgotten ; but even the 
few remaining heaps of ruins enable us to imagine 
the lost in all its greatness. 

The eloquent language of the stones, speaking to 
us from the tombs of the necropolis of Memphis, 
tells us much concerning the usages of pharaoh and 
his court. The king himself is officially designated 
by the most complete title, ' king of Upper and 
Lower Egypt.' His high dignity is also concealed 
under other names, as, for instance, Perao — that 
is, ' of the great house/ well known as Pharaoh in 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 49 

the Bible. For his subjects the pharaoh was a god 
(nuter) and lord (neb) par excellence. At sight of 
him they were obliged to prostrate themselves, rub- 
bing the ground with their noses ; sometimes, by 
the gracious order of the king, they only touched 
the knee of the omnipotent. In speaking of him, 
thej^ very often used the words ^ his holiness.' 

The royal court was composed of the nobility of 
the country, and of the servants of inferior rank. 
Not only the splendor of their origin gave the 
nobles dignity in the eyes of the people, but still 
more their wisdom, manners, and virtues. The 
persons belonging to the first class of the nobility 
generally bore the title Erpa, ' hereditary highness;' 
Ha, * prince ; ' Set, ' the illustrious ; ' Semer-ua-t, 
' the intimate friend.' The affairs of the court and 
of the administration of the country were conducted 
by ' the chiefs ' or the secretaries, and by a numer- 
ous class of scribes. 

The first king of whom much is really known is 
Senoferu, ' he who makes good ; ' his predecessors 
are shadows ; he is an undoubtedly historic man. 

So far as we are acquainted with the monuments, 
king Senoferu is the first ruler who had four titles 
of honor. Three name him commonly without dif- 
ference ' the lord of truth ; ' the fourth is the nam-e 
Senoferu, by which he was known to his father and 
4 



50 THE TRUE STORY OF 

his people. On the steep rock of Wodj-Magharah, 
where ancient caverns have been formed by the 
hand of man, and the traces of the miners are 
easily discovered, Senoferu appears as a warrior, 
who strikes to the ground a vanquished enemy with 
a mighty club. The inscription, engraved by the 
side of the picture, mentions him clearly by name 
and with the title of ' vanquisher of foreign peoples' 
who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys of 
the mountains round Sinai. 

Even at this day the pilgrim, whom the desire of 
knowledge brings to these parts, and whose foot 
treads hurriedly the gloomy, barren vallej^s of 
Sinai, sees traces of the old works in the caverns 
dating from the spring-time of the world's history. 
He sees and reads on the half-worn stone a vast 
number of pictures and writings. Standing on the 
high rock, which boldly commands the entrance to 
Wady-Magharah, his eye discovers without trouble 
the last ruins of a strong fortress, whose stout walls 
once contained huts near a deep well, and protected 
the Egyptian troops from hostile attack. 

The pharaohs of the fifth dynasty still resided at 
Memphis, and were the builders of the hugest of the 
pyramids. 

According to the sure testimony of the tables 
o£ Abydus and Saqqarah, the successor of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 51 

good king Senoferu was Khiifu. It is he whom 
the writers of Greek antiquity call sometimes 
Cheops (Herodotus), Chemmis or Chembes (Dio- 
dorus), while the epitomist of Manetho transcribes 
his name Suphis, and Eratosthenes, in the Theban 
list of kings, cites it as Saophis. With him begin 
the memorable traditions of Egyptian history. 

No one who has had the happiness — whether 
from chance or purpose, or in the way of his call- 
ing — to set foot on the black soil of Egypt, ever 
turns back on his homeward way before his eyes 
have looked upon that wonder of antiquity, the 
threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge 
of the desert, which jow reach after an hour's ride 
over the long causeway from the village of Gizeh, 
which stands close upon the left bank of the Nile. 
The desert's boundless sea of yellow sand — whose 
billows are piled up around the gigantic mass of 
the pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb itself, 
like a corpse long since deceased — surges hot and 
dry far up the green meadow, with its scattered 
vegetation where the grains of sand and corn 
are intermingled. From the far distance you see 
the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were 
regularly crystallized mountains, which the ever- 
creating Nature has called forth from the mother 
soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue 



52 THE TRUE STORY OF 

vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built 
by the hands of men, which, raised by king Khufu 
and two other pharaohs of the same family and 
dynasty, have been the admiration and astonish- 
ment alike of the ancient and modern world, as an 
incomparable work of power. Perfectly adjusted 
to the cardinal points of the horizon — the S. and 
N., the E. and W. — they differ in breadth and 
height, as is shown by the measurements of Colonel 
Vyse: 

Height. Breadth at base. 

1. Pyramid of Khufu, 450-75 feet. 746 feet (Eng.) 

2. Pyramid of Khafra, 447-5 *' 690 75 '' 

3. Pyramid of Menkara, 203 *' 352-878 '' 

As soon as a pharaoh mounted the throne, the 
sovereign gave orders to a nobleman, the master 
of all the buildings of his land, to plan the work 
and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edi- 
fice was raised on the limestone soil of the desert, 
in the form of a small pyramid built in steps, of 
which the well-constructed and finished interior 
formed the king's eternal dwelling, with his stone 
sarcophagus lying on the rocky floor. Let us sup- 
pose that this first building was finished while the 
pharaoh still lived in the bright sunlight. A sec- 
ond covering was added, stone by stone, on the 
outside of the kernel j a third to this second; and 
to this even a fourth ; and the mass of the giant 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 53 

building grew greater the longer the king enjoyed 
existence. And then, at last, when it became al- 
most impossible to extend the area of the pyramid 
further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, 
and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, 
covered the vast mass of the king's sepulchre, 
presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four 
faces. 

More than seventy such pyramids once rose on 
the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of 
whom it was at once the tomb and monument. Had 
not the greater number of these sepulchres of the 
pharaohs been destroyed almost to the foundation, 
and had the names of the builders of those which 
still stand been accurately preserved, it would have 
been easy for the inquirer to prove and make clear 
by calculation what was originally, and of necessity, 
the proportion between the masses of the pyra- 
mids and the years of the reigns of their respective 
builders. 

The Sphinx v^as sculptured at some time not far 
removed from the building of the three great pyra- 
mids. Recent discoveries have increased the aston- 
ishment of mankind at the huge bulk of this mon- 
strous figure, and at the vast and unknown buildings 
that stood around it, and, as it were, lay between 
its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has 



54 THE TRUE STORY OF 

been blown away and revealed these incomprehen- 
sible structures. In a well near by was found a 
finely executed statue of Kliafra, builder of the sec- 
ond pyramid. Clear and significant inscriptions 
upon these temple-buildings attest the truth of 
tradition, and support the received chronology. 

After Khafra's passage home to the realm of the 
dead, where the king of the gods, Osiris, held the 
sceptre, Men-kau-ra ascended the throne. His 
pj^ramid is called in the texts by the name of AzV, 
that is, 'the high one.' When Colonel Vyse found 
his way to the middle of the chamber of the dead, 
and entered into the silent space of ' Eternity,' his 
eye discerned, as the last trace of Menkaura's place 
of burial, the wooden cover of the sarcophagus, and 
the stone coffin hewn out of one hard block, beau- 
tifully adorned outside in the style of a temple, 
according to the fashion of the masters of the old 
empire. The sarcophagus rests now at the bottom 
of the Mediterranean, the English vessel which was 
conveying it having been wrecked near Gibraltar. 
The cover, which was saved, thanks to the material 
of which it was composed, is now exhibited in the 
gallery of Egyptian antiquities in the British Mu- 
seum. Its 01 tside is adorned with a short text con- 
ceived in the following terms : 

'' O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Men- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 55 

kaura living eternally, child of Olympus,* son of 
Urania, heir of Kronos, over thee may she stretch 
herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, Urania, 
in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant 
that thou shouldest be like God, free from all evils. 
King Menkaura, living eternally." 

This prayer is of very ancient origin, for there 
are examples of it found on the covers of sarcophagi 
belonging to the dynasties of the ancient empire. 
The sense of it is full of significance. Delivered from 
mortal matter, the soul of the defunct king passes 
through the immense space of heaven to unite itself 
with God, after having overcome the evil which op- 
posed it during its life on its terrestrial journey. 

The kings of the fifth dynasty continued to reside 
at Memphis, and each appears to have built a pyra- 
mid for his tomb, although but few of them can 
now be identified. The names, however, "are pre- 
served, such as Qebeh, 'the cool,' Nuter-setu, 'the 
most holy place,' and the like. 

According to the monuments, the successor of 
Menkaura bore two names. The first, the most 
frequent, is Tat-ka-ra, and the second Assa. He 
has also left texts at Wady-Magharah, which tell 
us of works executed during his reign in the mines 

* The translator here uses Greek equivalents tliat affect one 
like anachronisms. 



66 THE TRUE STORY OF 

of this mountain. His pyramid is called nofer^ that 
is, ' the beautiful ; ' unfortunately we have no means 
of fixing its position. A very precious recollection 
of him has been preserved in a literary work com- 
posed by his son, Prince Patah-hotep. Let us say 
a word on this papyrus, which is probably the most 
ancient manuscript in the world, and which is bet- 
ter known under the name of the Prisse papyrus. 
It was bought by a Frenchman of this name at 
Thebes, and given to the National Library at Paris. 
The greater part of this document contains a 
treatise by the son of Assa, and relates to the vir- 
tues necessary for man, and to the best manner 
of arranging his life and making his way in the 
world. The general title is conceived in these 
words : "This is the teaching of the governor Patah- 
hotep under the majesty of King Assa ; long may 
he live." At the time when he composed his book, 
he must have been very old, since he describes the 
decrepitude of his old age in very significant terms. 
*' The eyes," he says, " are very diminutive, and the 
ears stopped up ; power is constantly diminished, 
the mouth is silent and does not speak, the mem- 
ory is closed and does not remember the past. 
The bones are not in a state to render service ; 
that which was good is become bad. Even the 
taste is gone. Old age makes a man miserable in 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 57 

every way. The nose is stopped and does not 
breathe." It was thus that the prince begins the 
question which forms the subject of his book, 
which was to give to youth precepts which were 
justified by the practice of his long life, and fre-. 
quently given in a humorous vein. 

It is extremely interesting to follow the simple 
words which in an antique style represent the 
thoughts of the old man, and which touch almost 
all the conditions of human life. One of the most 
beautiful specimens is without doubt the following 
piece. He characterizes admirably the spirit of 
humanity which breathes through these precepts 
of a very high moral tendency. ''If thou art be- 
come great, after tliou hast been humble, and if 
thou hast amassed riches after poverty, being 
because of that the first in thy town ; if thou art 
known for thy wealth, and art become a great 
lord, let not thy heart become proud because of 
thy riches, for it is God who is the author of them 
for thee. Despise not another who is as thou wast ; 
be towards him as towards thy equal." 

Although the tombs of this ancient epoch reveal 
to us frequently traits extremely favorable to our 
ideas of humanity, we cannot compare what they 
tell us with the naive and simple language of the 
precepts of Prince Patah-hotep. It is neither the 



58 THE TRUE STORY OF 

priest nor the prince who addresses the youth of 
his day ; it is simply the man who teaches them. 
Nor is he a morose philosopher. Is there anything 
truer, and at the same time more persuasive, than 
his exhortation, '^Let thy face be cheerful as long 
as thou liyest; has any one come out of the coffin 
after having once entered it ? " 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 59 



CHAPTER V. 

AET AND AECHITECTUEE IN THE TWELFTH 
DYNASTY. 

With this fifth dynasty ended the first great 
division of the series of pharaohs, and also the pre- 
eminence of Memphis. The seat of government 
vras transferred to middle Egypt, and at some time 
during the sixth dynasty Thebes arose. But though 
there are many pharaohs whose names are well 
known and of whose exploits there are some traces, 
yet for the most part a veil of impenetrable dark- 
ness rests upon the long period down to the end of 
the eleventh dynasty. 

The twelfth dynasty stands out in a light that 
has almost the clearness of authentic history. It was 
a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and in 
which art was cultivated with magnificent results. 
Thebes was the capital, and upon its temples and 
palaces the most enormous labor and expense was 
lavishly bestowed. The sanctuary of the great tem- 
ple of Amon, at Karnac, whose ruins present to 
us walls, columns (the so-called Proto-Doric), and 



60 THE TRUE STORY OF 

pictures covered with the names of the kings of this 
house, kept on increasing from this time of its 
foundation, till it became an imperial building, 
whose walls of stone reveal to us the history of the 
Theban kings. 

What lends a high worth to these ages is not only 
the greatness of the kings, founded on the wisdom 
of their domestic rule, and the glory of their vic- 
tories in foreign countries : art also, with all its 
striving after beauty and noble forms, was cherished 
by these rulers, and skilful masters produced an 
immense number of beautiful works and pictures. 
Their ancestors of earlier times had already under- 
stood how to work with unknown but incomparable 
tools the hard substance of the granite and similar 
stones, to polish the surface like a mirror, and to fit 
the gigantic masses together, not unfrequently with 
iron clamps, as in the structure of the Great Pyra- 
mid. But, although the hand of the studious artist 
had worked in hard stone, and fashioned after life 
what nature had already produced in flesh and bone, 
yet there was still wanting the last stamp of per- 
fection — namely, beauty which moves us to admi- 
ration. Beginning with the race of the Theban 
kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form 
of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the 
eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 61 

The great labyrinth and the excavation for the 
artificial lake Mceris were made during this period. 
In every part of the kingdom the power of these 
pharaohs was felt. In Tanis, ' the great city ' of 
the lower country, inhabited all round by races of 
Semitic origin, the kings of the twelfth dynasty had 
already raised buildings and invoked the sculptor's 
art, to do honor to the gods themselves by these 
splendid works. The portrait of Usurtasen even 
has been found in some ruins of this temple world. 

The rich paintings placed with profusion on the 
walls of the tomb of Khnumhotep, a great lord 
under the reign of Usurtasen II., have an inestima- 
ble value for a knowledge of the arts, the trades, 
and the domestic and public life of the Egyptians 
of this epoch, quite apart from the holy things to 
which, in detail, the paintings and inscriptions re- 
late. The veiy interesting scenes with which the 
hall of sacrifice is adorned are of great importance 
in an historical point of view. They relate to the 
arrival in Egypt of a family of the Semitic nation 
of the Amu, which has quitted its native country to 
fix its abode on the blessed banks of the Nile. This 
family is composed of thirty-seven persons, men, 
women, and children, who present their respects 
to the person of Khnumhotep, asking of him, as it 
seems, a good reception. The royal scribe Nofer- 



62 THE TRUE STORY OF 

hotep, an official in the service of Khnumliotep, 
offers to his chief a leaf of papyrus, with an inscrip- 
tion in this sense : '' In the sixth year in the reign 
of King Usurtasen II. ; an account of the Amu who 
brought to the king's son, Khnumhotep, while he 
was alive, the paint for the eyes called Mastemut 
of the country of Pitshu. Their number is com- 
posed of thirty-seven persons." The scribe in ques- 
tion is followed by another personage, an Egj-ptian 
by nation, whom a small hieroglyphic legend desig- 
nates as ' the steward of those, of the name of 
Khiti.' Without doubt, then,, these Semitic immi- 
grants, as soon as they arrived in the territory of 
Khnumhotep, were placed under the care of Khiti. 
After these personages, who are charged with the 
introduction, the chief of the Amu presents himself 
with his suite. The first bears the name and the 
title of 'hak prince of the country of Abesha.' 
This name is of pure Semitic origin, and recalls that 
of Abishai, borne by the son of the sister of king 
David, who was distinguished by his military tal- 
ents in the service of his uncle. Our Abesha 
approaches respectfully the person of Khnumhotep, 
whom Hhe eldest son whom God had given him 
accompanies,' and offers him, as a gift or baksheesh, 
a magnificent wild goat of the kind still found in 
our day on the rocks of the peninsula of Sinai. Be- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 63 

hind him we see his travelling companions, bearded 
men, armed with lances, bows, and clubs ; the 
women, dressed in the lively fashions of the Amu ; 
the children, and the asses, loaded with the baggage 
of the travellers, fixing their curious eyes on the 
Egyptian lord Khnumhotep ; while a companion 
of the little party seems to elicit the harmony of 
sounds, by the aid of a plectrum, playing on a lyre 
of very old form. An inscription, traced above the 
scene which we have been describing, reads, ' paint for 
the eyes, Mastemut, which thirty-seven Amu bring.' 
The paint in question was an article very much 
prized in Egypt. It served as a cosmetic to dye 
the eyebrows and the eyelids a black color ; and 
they painted under the two eyes a green stripe as a 
strange adornment. This paint was furnished by 
the Arabs or Shasu, who inhabited the land called 
Pitshu (the particular Egyptian term for the better 
known Midian), and, with their laden beasts, took 
the desert route from the east to Egypt, to traffic 
with the inhabitants of the Nile valley. This 
curious picture may serve as an illustration of the 
history of the sons of Jacob, who arrived in Egypt 
to implore the favor of Joseph. But it would be 
a singular error to suppose in this picture at Beni- 
Hassan any allusion to the history in the Holy 
Scriptures. 



64 THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHAPTER VI. 

SEMITES AND EGYPTIANS. 

ACCOBDING to the testimony of the Turin book 
of the kings, the reigns of the rulers, who towards 
the end of the thirteenth dynasty occupied the 
throne, must have been of comparatively short 
duration, since they scarcely lasted on an average 
for four j^ears. The cause of such a striking fact 
must be sought in internal troubles in the empire, 
in civil wars and struggles of individual occupants 
of the throne, who interrupted the regular succes- 
sion, and made the existence of collateral dj'nasties 
very probable. Next to the kings of the thirteenth 
dynasty of Theban or Upper Egyptian origin, there 
appeared seventy-six pharaohs, who, according to 
the Manethonian account, had fixed their royal 
abode in the Lower Egyptian town Sakhau, or 
Khasau, called by the Greeks Xois. This internal 
discord, caused by the ambitious plans of the pos- 
sessors of power in Upper and Lower Egypt, gives 
us on the one hand the explanation of the long 
silence of the contemporary monuments, and on 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 65 

the other hand a key to the full understanding of 
the success of the warlike invasion, which brought 
a foreign race into Egypt, who would never have 
dared to oppose the armed powers of the united 
empire of Kemi. 

The inhabitants settled between the branches of 
the Nile were for the most part of pure Egyptian 
race. The boundary of demarcation, which sepa- 
rated this race from the neighboring peoples, was 
on the west the so-called Canopic branch of the 
Nile, as the Pelusiac branch was the boundary in 
the opposite direction to the east. 

When we turn to the eastern boundary of the 
Delta, Semitism meets us according to the testimony 
of the monuments in the most evident manner. 
The principal region of it comprehends the country 
to the east of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, in 
which were situated the three Lower Egyptian 
nomes VIII., XIV., and XX. The capital of the 
fourteenth nome, the town of Tanis, which gave 
its name to the branch of the Nile which runs by 
it, bore the foreign designation Zar, Zal, and even 
in the plural Zaru, as if it were to be translated ' the 
town of Zar.' The name Tanis, which was given 
to it by the Greeks, is to be carried back to another 
designation of it, namely to the Egyptian form Zean, 
Zoan. It is the same name which we meet with 
5 



66 THE TRUE STORY OF 

in Holy Scripture as Zoan, which was built seven 
years later than Hebron ; (Numbers xiii. 23.) The 
town of Tanis is everywhere in the Egyptian 
inscriptions designated as an essentially foreign 
town, the inhabitants of which are represented ' as 
the people in the eastern border lands.' The east- 
ern border land is however nothing else than the 
ordinary designation of what was later the Tanaitic 
nome, which, although not often, appears in the 
list of nomes under the denomination of Ta mazor, 
that is, ' the fortified land,' in which may easily be 
recognized the long-sought most ancient form of 
the Hebrew name for Egypt, Mazor or Misraim. 

On the granite memorial stone of the year 400, 
of the era of king Nubti, or Nub, which was dis- 
covered in Tanis, and whose designation of the 
year to this day puzzles the heads of the learned, 
there appears ' a governor of the fortress,' Zal, who 
besides this office enjoyed the title of ' governor of 
the foreign peoples.' In this example also there is 
question of inhabitants of foreign origin in that por- 
tion of the Egyptian Delta which we have mentioned. 

The papyrus rolls of the time of the nineteenth 
dynasty with a certain preference busy themselves 
with this town, which, besides the two names we 
have mentioned, bore also a third, Pi-ramses, that 
is the ' town of Ramses.' About the origin of this 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 67 

name, arid about ' the identity of the town Ramses 
with the biblical Ramses, we will further on collect 
together what is necessary to elucidate the subject. 
With reference to this question, the papyrus rolls 
to which we have alluded mention a number of 
lakes and waters, situated in the neighborhood of 
the foreign town Zal, whose peculiar designations 
at once remind us of their Semitic origin. I will 
mention as an example of the names of waters rich 
in fish and birds — the Shaanau, Putra, Nachal, Pu- 
harta or Puharat. The marshes and lakes rich in 
water-plants, which at this day are known by the 
name of Birket Menzaleh, were then called by the 
name common to all these waters, Sufi (or with the 
Egyptian article, Pa-sufi, which is the same as ' the 
Sufi'), which word completely agrees with the 
Hebrew Suf. The interpreters generally under- 
stand this word in the sense of rushes or a rushy 
country, while in old Egj^ptian it almost completely 
answers to a water rich in papyrus plants. 

To the east of the Tanaitic nome, or the ' Eastern 
border land,' another nome was situated on the 
sandy banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, 
the eighth in the general enumeration of the Egyp- 
tian nomes, which the inscriptions represent under 
the designation of the 'point of the east.' The 
capital of the nome we have mentioned bore the 



68 THE TRUE STORY OF 

name Pi-tom, that is, ' the town of the sungod 
Tom,' in which we must immediately recognize the 
Pithom of the Bible. The town occupied a central 
situation of the district, whose name also must be 
referred to a foreign origin. It is the district Suko, 
or Sukot, the Succoth of the Holy Scriptures at the 
exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, the 
meaning of which, ' tent,' or ' tent camp,' can be 
only established by the help of the Semitic. Such 
a designation is not extraordinary for a district 
whose natural peculiarity quite answers to the 
meaning of the name, since it embraces places with 
meadows, the property of pharaoh, on which the 
wandering Bedouins of the eastern desert pitched 
their tents to afford necessary food for their cattle. 
Even as late as the Graeco-Roman times of Egyp- 
tian history appears the designation ' tents ; ' and 
tent-camp (Scenae) is also applied to places where 
they were accustomed to pitch their camp of tents. 
The site of the town Pitom is on the monuments 
frequently more closel}^ defined by the important 
designation 'at the entrance of the east,' 'at the 
eastern entrance,' namely from the desert into 
Egypt. A piece of water in the neighborhood of 
the town received again a name borrowed not 
from the Egyptian, but Semitic language, namely, 
Charma, or Charoma, which means ' the piercing.' 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 69 

To return once more to Sukot, we must remind 
the reader that the children of Israel in their 
journey out from the town Ramses pitched their 
first camp in the country called ' the tents.' On 
the second day they reached in their wanderings 
the place to which the Bible gives the name of 
Etham. I have elsewhere proved that this place 
also, according to Egyptian testimony, was either 
in the country of Sukot, or at least in its close 
neighborhood. It is the place called Chetam, on 
various occasions, in the hieratic papyrus rolls, the 
meaning of which, ' a shut-up place, fortress,' com- 
pletely agrees with the Hebrew Etham. We shall 
have the opportunity of returning to this Chetam- 
Etham when we describe the exodus of the chil- 
dren of Israel. 

In the same nome, the eighth of the description 
on the monuments, and the same which the Greeks 
and Romans used to call the Sethroitic, lay without 
doubt that most important town, which became the 
turning-point in the following history, the town 
Hauar, the literal interpretation of which is ' the 
house of the leg' (uar). In a particular place in 
the Manethonian description of the dominion of the 
foreigners, the so-called Hyksos kings, which has 
fortunately been preserved in an extract of the 
Jewish historian Josephus, there occurs a mention 



70 THE TRUE STORY OF 

of the same name. Manetho names the town 
Auaris — and incidentally deduces its origin from 
a religious tradition. A closer examination of the 
nome with its towns, as they are described to us in 
the different more or less detailed and well-arranged 
lists on the monuments of the Ptolemies, renders 
it probable that other places also of the land of 
Egypt bore the name of Hauar, and particularly 
those which in their Serapeums, that is, in the 
temples of the dead, dedicated to the benefactor 
of the land, Osiris, carefully preserved the legs of 
the god as holy relics. Thus was named, for exam- 
ple, the capital of the third Lower Egyptian nome, 
or the Libyan, with a name added, Hauar-ament, 
that is, ' the town of the right leg.' The great 
inscription, so important for a know^ledge of the 
land of Egypt, on the wall of the most holy place 
in the middle of the temple of Edfou (ApoUinopolis 
Magna), completely confirms the statement that 
the inhabitants of that town of the Libyan nome, 
' worshipped this leg in one of the temples dedi- 
cated to the Apis bull.' We may, therefore, with 
complete justice, maintain that the name also of the 
town Avaris, on the eastern side of the Delta, was 
connected with this peculiar worship of the leg of 
Osiris. Lastly, it is not difficult to recognize the 
left leg of the god, because of the evident refer- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 71 

ence to the peculiar situation of the arms of the 
Nile, which was well known to be considered as 
another form and manifestation of Osiris. After 
the stream has divided itself at the point of the 
Delta, into a fork in the neighborhood of a place 
called Kerkasorus (this designation seems to have 
the meaning of split, 'Kerk,' of Osiris), so as to 
form two main arms, or, as the Egyptians were 
accustomed to say, legs, the Canopic to the west, 
and the Pelusiac to the east, the western arm was 
considered as the right leg of Osiris, and the Pelu- 
siac on the contrary as the left leg of the god. The 
towns situated in the neighborhood of the mouth 
were naturally considered as peculiar Osiris cities, 
in whose holy of holies the legs of that god played 
so peculiar a part. By this method of understand- 
ing it the saga finds its full explanation. 

The town Hauar Avaris, with which we are at 
this moment occupied, lay, as we said, to the east 
of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, with which, 
according to all probability, it was connected by a 
canal, if the theory should not be accepted that it 
was placed directly on the shore of the branch of 
the Nile at its mouth, when the river had become 
very broad. By a gradual silting up of this branch 
in the course of thousands of years, the restitution 
of the ancient bed of the river, and the right deter- 



72 5^^^^ TRUE STORY OF 

mination of the situation of the towns on its banks, 
has become so difficult a task, that we can have no 
hope of finding anywhere the site of the Hyksos 
town Avaris, which has disappeared, unless some 
very fortunate accident should bring about its 
discovery. But that Hauar must in any case be 
sought in the neighborhood of a lake is taught us 
in the most positive manner by the much cited 
insci-iption in the tomb at El-kab of the navigator 
Aahmes, the faithful servant of the pharaoh who, 
in the history of his life, relates how he came there, 
when the Egyptian fleet was engaged in fighting 
the foreign enemies in the waters Pa-zetku, or 
Zeku, of the town of Hauar. This name also, in 
spite of the Egyptian article placed before it, has 
a Semitic appearance, so that I should not hesitate 
to compare it with corresponding roots of Semitic 
languages. 

Another place situated on the same territory of 
the Sethroite nome, bears on the monuments a 
purely Semitic name, Maktol, or Magdol : this is 
nothing else than the Hebrew Migdol, with the 
meaning of a ' town,' or fortress, out of which the 
Greeks formed on their side the well-sounding 
name Magdolon. That the ancient Egyptians were 
well acquainted with the meaning of this word, 
which was foreign to their language, is conclu- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 73 

sively proved by the masculine article being placed 
before it, and the sign of a wall which was added 
to the foreign word when written in Egyptian. 
The site of this Migdol, of which mention is made 
in the Bible, not only in the description of the 
exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, but also in 
occasional passages, was distinctly stated to be at 
one of the most northern points of the inhabited 
country of the Egyptians ; and as it also bore on 
the monuments the native name of Samut, must 
be sought in the heaps of rubbish at Tell-es-Samut 
on the eastern side of Lake Menzaleh. With this 
fortress Migdol, between which and the sea King 
Ramses III. once tarried with a portion of his 
infantry, as a not inactive witness of th'e victory 
of his Egyptian fleet over the confederated sea- 
faring people of the islands and coasts of the Medi- 
terraiiean, the list of defences, which were intended 
to protect the country on the east, is not yet closed. 
Tliere lay in the direction of the north-east, on the 
western border of the so-called Lake Sirbonis, an 
important place for the defence of the frontier, 
called Anbu, that is ' the wall,' ' the circumvalla- 
tion.' It is frequently mentioned by the ancients, 
not under its Egyptian appellation, but in the form 
of a translation. The Hebrews call it Shur, that 
is ' the wall,' and the Greeks ' to Gerrhon,' or ' ta 



74 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Gerrha,' which means ' the fences,' or ' enclosures/ 
This remark will at a stroke remove all difficulties 
which have hitherto existed with reference to the 
origin of this word, which in spite of difference in 
sound nevertheless refers to one and the same 
place. 

Whoever travelled eastwards from Egypt to leave 
the country, was obliged to pass the place called 
'the walls,' before he was allowed to enter the 
road of the Philistines, as it is called in Holy Writ, 
on his further journey. An Egyptian garrison, 
under the command of a captain, guarded the pas- 
sage through the fortress, which only opened and 
closed on the suspicious wanderer if he was fur- 
nished with a permission from the royal authorities. 
Anbu-Shur-Gerrhon was also the first stopping- 
place on the great military road, which led from the 
Delta by Chetam-Etham and Migdol to the desert 
of Shur. From Anbu, passing by the fortress of 
Uit, in the land of Hazi, or Hazion (Kassiotis of 
the ancients), the traveller reached the tower, or 
Bechen, of Aanecht (Ostrakene), where occurred 
the boundary of the countries of Kemi and Zaha. 
On the foreign territory of the last-named place the 
traveller reached, always passing along the coast 
of the sea, the place Ab-sakabu (having the same 
meaning in Semitic as Rhinokolura, or Rhinokorura 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. . 75 

with the Greeks, namely, ' the place of the mutila- 
tion of the noses'), and at length reached the 
country of the inhabitants living on the borders of 
Palestine. 

Thus there lay in the neighborhood of Mendes, 
perhaps even in Mendes itself, a fortified place 
called ' the fortress of Azaba,' the last part of which 
does not belong to the Egyptian tongue but to a 
Semitic stock. This is the fortress of Ozaeb, in 
Hebrew — i. e. ' of the idol.' Another well-known 
town, in the account of the war of the first Menep- 
tah against the Libyan groups of peoples on the 
east side of the Delta, bore the appellation Pi- 
bailos, ' the town Bailos ' (Greek, Byblos ; Coptish, 
Phelbes), the Semitic origin of which is made clear 
by its evident relationship with the Hebrew, Balas 
(the mulberry). In its neighborhood was the lake 
Shakana, also with a non-Egyptian name, the 
meaning of which is only explained by the Semitic 
root shakan — ' to settle down, to live, to be neigh- 
bors to.' More inland, in the middle of the same 
region of the Delta, the traveller met, to the west 
of the Athribitic nome, the town Kahani, a name 
with a foreign Semitic sound, which recalls at once 
the Hebrew hohen^ ' priests.' In this way it is 
not difficult by comparative philology to point out 
other examples of the connection between the 



76 THE TRUE STORY OF 

names of Egyptian settlements and towns and ancient 
Semitic inhabitants. 

But the presence of Semitic natives on the Egyp- 
tian land is shown from other sources, whether they 
were planted pure and unmixed on the soil, or were 
led by time and circumstances to seek their bread 
there. The memorial stones found in the cities of 
the dead in Ancient Egypt, and the coffins and the 
rolls of papyrus, show unmistakably the presence 
of Semitic persons, who were settled in the valley 
of the Nile, and had, so to speak, obtained the rights 
of citizenship ; as also, on the other side, the incli- 
nation of the Egyptians to give to their children 
Semitic, or, by a singular mixture, half Egyptian 
and half Semitic names. 

The inclination of the Egyptian mind to Semitic 
modes of life must, in my opinion, be explained from 
their having long lived together, and from very 
early existing mutual relations of the Egyptian and 
Semitic races. Above all things else, it must not 
be lost sight of that the trade relations, which ex- 
tended from the Nile to the Euphrates, had con- 
tributed to introduce into Egypt foreign expressions 
for many products of the soil and foreign works of 
art. The animal world also, when they had not 
their home in the valley of the Nile, brought their 
contributions of words borrowed from the Semitic — 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 77 

as, ' sus ' for a horse, ^ kamal ' for a camel, ' abir ' for 
a particular kind of ox. The endeavor to pay court, 
in the most open manner, to whatever was Semitic, 
became, in the time of the nineteenth and twentieth 
dynasties, a really absurd mania. They introduced 
Semitic words in place of Egyptian words already 
existing in their own mother-tongue, and in the 
writing of their country ; and turned even Egyptian 
words into Semitic, by transposition of the syllables, 
if we may use such an expression. But the worst 
of it was that the most educated and best informed 
portion of the Egyptian people, the world of priests 
and scribes, found an especial pleasure in decking 
their history with Semitic words, which they used 
to employ in the place of good Egyptian expressions. 
They used Semitic expressions like the following : 
rosh, ' head ' ; sar, ' a king ' ; belt, ' a house ' ; bab, 
' a door ' ; bir, ' a spring ' ; birkata, ' a lake ' ; ketem, 
'gold'; shalom, 'to greet'; rom, 'to be high'; 
barak, ' to bless ' ; and many others. 

We must here, on this subject, not forget a re- 
mark which, Avhen well understood, is calculated to 
explain in some degree this striking fact, and to 
excuse what seems worthy of blame in this mania 
for the introduction of foreign words into the 
mother-tongue. In the east of the lowlands, in 
those countries of which we have spoken above. 



78 THE TRUE STORY OF 

and whose central point was the cities of Ramses and 
Pitom, the Semitic immigration had extended so 
widely, and had reached such a preponderance over 
the Egyptian population, that, in the course of 
centuries, a gradual blending of both nations took 
place. It led to the formation of a mixed people, 
traces of which have been preserved unchanged in 
these places to the present day. The neighboring 
Egyptians, weaker in numbers, found it convenient 
not only to adopt the manners and usages of the 
Semites, but began to take an inclination to the 
worship of foreign idols, and to enrich their own 
divine lore with new and hitherto unknown heavenly 
forms of foreign origin. At the head of all stood, 

half Egyptian and half Semitic, the godhead of Set 

• 

or Sutech, with the additional name Nub,* ' gold,' 
who was considered universally as the representa- 
tive and king of the foreign deities in the land of 
Mazour. According to his essence, a most ancient 
Egyptian creation, Set, at the same tinie gradually 
became the representative of all foreign countries — 
the god of the foreigners. 

* It is a very remarkable fact, that, from the times of the 
highest antiquity in Eastern representations, the curse of the 
Typhonic deities adheres to gold. According to a Greek tradi- 
tion (Plutarch on his and Osiris, p. 30), at the sacrificial feast of 
Helios the worshippers of the god were directed to carry no gold 
about their persons, just as in the present day the followers of 
Mohammed take off all gold trinkets before they go through the 
appointed prayers. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 79 

If I mention the names of Baal and Astarta, 
which we so frequently meet with in the inscrip- 
tions, it is scarcely necessary to state ,that both 
have their origin in the Phoenician divine lore. As 
in Sidon, so in Memphis, the warlike Astarta (who 
in the Egyptian monuments of a later time was 
represented as a lion-headed goddess, guiding with 
her own hand her team of horses yoked to the 
chariot of war) had her own temple ; and we have 
proof that Ramses II. raised a particular temple to 
her honor and her service on the lonely shore of 
the Mediterranean, near the Lake Sirbonis. 

Less frequently occurring on the monuments than 
the previously mentioned representatives of the 
Semitic divinities, the fierce Reshpu still had his 
place in the Egyptian host of heaven. He was 
called ' the end of long times, the king of eternity, 
the lord of strength in the midst of the host of 
gods ; ' and the goddess, Kadosh, that is ' the holy,' 
whose name already indicates the peculiar character 
of her heavenly existence. The frolicsome Bes, or 
Bas, also, the chief of song and of music, of pleasures, 
and all social amusements, must be mentioned in this 
place, since he was, according to his origin, a pure 
child of the Semitic race of the Arabs. His name, in 
their language, means Lynx and Cat ; and we think 
we are not carrying the comparison too far if we 



80 THE TRUE STORY OF 

at once place by his side the cat-headed goddess, 
the protectress of the town of Bubastus, the much 
venerated, lissom Bast. If we also mention that 
the Phoenician Onka, and the Syrian Anait, or 
Anaitis, belong to those heavenly beings whose 
names and forms are again found in the Egyp- 
tian divine world, where they take their places 
under the names of Anka and Anta, then we have 
exhausted the principal representatives of the 
Semitic deities in the old Egyptian theology. 

Perhaps the influence of the Semitic neighbor- 
hood on Egyptian matters might be proved from 
looking at it in a new point of view. In this case 
a very remarkable and striking fact will bear con- 
vincing evidence in favor of our views. We allude 
here to the peculiar era, found nowhere else, which 
an Egyptian courtier once used, in the fourteenth 
century before Christ, to indicate the year of the 
execution of an inscription. I refer to the cele- 
brated memorial stone of Tanis, erected in the reign 
of the second Ramses. 

Contrary to the custom and usage, of reckoning 
time by the day, month, and year of the reigning 
king, the stone of Tanis offers us the only example 
as yet discovered, which, according to appearances, 
resorts to a foreign and not an Egyptian mode of 
reckoning time. There is here question of the year 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 81 

400 of king Nub, a prince belonging to the foreign 
lords of the Hyksos. In other words, if we do not 
misunderstand the main issue, in the town of Tanis, 
whose inhabitants for the most part belonged to 
Semitic races, this mode of reckoning was in such 
general use that the person who raised the memo- 
rial-stone thought it nothing extraordinary to em- 
ploy it as a mode of reckoning time in the beautifully 
engraved inscription on granite which was exhibited 
before all eyes in a temple. There can hardly be a 
stronger proof of the influence of Semitic manners 
on the Egyptian spirit and customs than the testi- 
mony we have brought forward of the stone of 
Tanis. A preponderating and almost irresistible 
power of Semitism lies hidden here, the importance 
of which it is as well to remark upon before we 
undertake to describe the history of the irruption 
of the foreigners into Egypt, and the consequences 
connected with it on the condition of the empire. 
Taking into consideration all this testimony, which 
seems to speak in favor of our view of the impor- 
tance of Semitic influence on Egyptian relations, we 
will question the monuments for confirmation of the 
presence of Semitic races and families on Egyptian 
soil. We will direct our attention to the eastern 
provinces of the Delta, which offered the only 
entrance to wanderers from the east. 
6 



82 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

As an answer, we insert the literal translation of 
a circular, which was composed in the course of the 
nineteenth dynasty, and with the view on the part 
of the writer to give a report to his superior on the 
admission of foreign immigrants to Egyptian soil. 

"I will now pass to something else which will 
give satisfaction to the heart of my lord (namely 
to give him an account of it), that we have per- 
mitted the races of the Shasu of the land of Aduma 
(Edom) to pass through the fortress Chetam (Etham) 
of Mineptah-Hotephimaat — Life, weal, and health 
to him — which is situated in the land of Sukot near 
the lakes of the town Pitom of King Mineptah-Ho- 
tephimaat, which is situated in the land of Sukot, 
to nourish themselves and to nourish their cattle 
on the property of Pharaoh, who is a good sun 
for all nations." 

In this extremely important document of the time 
of the first Mineptah, the son of Ramses II., there 
is (question of the races of the sons of the desert, or 
to use the Egyptian name for these, the races of the 
Shasu, in which science has for a long time and with 
perfect certainty recognized the Bedouins of the 
highest antiquity. They inhabited the great desert 
between Egypt and the land of Canaan, and ex- 
tended their wanderings sometimes as far as the river 
Euphrates. According to the monuments, the Shasu 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 83 

belonged to the great race of the Amu, of which 
they were the head representatives. In the times 
of the first Seti, the father of Ramses II., the land 
passed through by the Shasu began at the fortress 
Zal Tanis, and stretched towards the east as far as 
the hill-town 'of Canana,' in Wady Araba to the 
south of the Dead Sea, which Seti I. took by storm 
in his campaign against the Bedouins. The author 
of the writing designates those Shasu who were per- 
mitted by superior authority to enter the Egyptian 
kingdom, as the Shasu of the land of Aduma, which 
was the Edom of the Bible and the land of Idumsea 
of later times. The tribes of the Shasu, who are 
referred to in the circular we have quoted, were 
therefore sufficiently designated as inhabitants of 
the land of Edom. The position of these last is 
more closely defined in Holy Writ as the moun- 
tainous country of Seir. 

On this occasion we have the satisfaction to 
declare once again the complete agreement of the 
information on the monuments with the statements 
of Holy Writ. In that place of the Harris papyrus, 
in which mention is made of the campaigns of king 
Ramses III. against these very Shasu, an impor- 
tant observation is introduced into the speech of 
the king. He Speaks thus: 'ari-a sek Sair-u em 
mahaut Sasu ; ' that is, ' I annihilated the Sair among 



84 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the tribes of the Shasu.' The name of Sair answers 
letter for letter with the Hebrew word Seir. The 
comparison must appear all the more founded, as 
the Egyptian writer 'has appended to the written 
words of the name the sign for dumbness, which is 
the hieroglyphic for a child, as if he wished by this 
to prove his knowledge of the Semitic language, in 
which Sa'ir means Hhe little one.' The Se'irites, 
the children of Se^ir, were dwellers in caves, and 
original inhabitants of the mountain range of Se'ir. 
At a later period, hunted down by the children of 
Esau, they yielded their land to the conquerors, to 
whom the appellation of Se'irites, as inhabitants of 
the Se'ir range, was afterwards transferred. 

With the help of this knowledge beforehand, it is 
no longer difficult to assign their true place to the 
Shasu on the theatre of events which are the object 
of our inquiry. The land of Edom and the neigh- 
boring hill-country was the home of the principal 
races of the Shasu, which in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries before our era left their mountains 
to fall upon Egypt with weapons in their hands, or 
in a friendly manner followed by their flocks and 
herds to beg sustenance for themselves and their 
cattle, and to seek an entrance into the rich pas- 
tures of the land of Succoth. Manifestly the calls 
of hunger drove them to the rich corn lands of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. §5 

blessed Delta, where they took up their abode in 
huts near their brethren of the same race, who had 
become settled inhabitants. 

As in the neighborhood of the town of Ramses 
and the place Pitom the Semitic population had 
formed the main foundation of the inhabitants from 
hoar antiquity, and as subjects of the pharaoh had 
been obedient to the laws of the empire, so in the 
lapse of time, in another part of the eastern prov- 
inces, in the country of Pibailos (the Bilbeis of 
modern maps), close on the edge of the desert and 
in sight of the cultivated land, disagreeable neigh- 
bors had fixed themselves and pitched their tents 
where they found pasture for their cattle. These 
were Bedouins, who according to all probability 
found their way from the dreary desert through the 
difficult paths of the great papyrus marsh near the 
present town of Suez in a north-western direction, 
to find the object of their wandering near the town 
of Pibailos. Mineptah I., the son and successor of 
Ramses II., gives on the monument of his victories 
in Karnak a graphic account of the dangerous 
character of these unbidden guests to whom, from 
Pibailos to On and Memphis, the way lay open, 
without the kings his predecessors having found it 
worth while to establish fortresses, to bar the way 
of these strangers to the most important cities of 



86 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the lower country. When the pharaoh we have 
named succeeded to the throne of his fathers, the 
danger of a sudden irruption on this side appeared 
all the more threatening, because on the other side 
the Libyans, the western neighbors of the Egyp- 
tians, with their allies suddenly passed the frontiers 
of Kemi, and extended their plundering raids into 
the heart of the inhabited and cultivated western 
nomes of the Delta. According to the report of 
the inscription of his victories (unfortunately in- 
jured by the lesion of the upper part), Mineptah 
I. saw himself obliged to take precautions for the 
safety of the land. For the protection of the east- 
ern frontier, the capitals On and Memphis were 
provided with the necessary fortifications, for as 
the cited inscription expressly says, '' the foreigners 
had pitched their ahil^ or tents before the town of 
Pibailos, and the districts at the lakes of Shakana 
to the north of the canal of the Heliopolite nome 
had remained unused, for they had been abandoned 
to serve as mere pasture of the herds because of the 
foreigners, and had become deserted from the time 
of our forefathers.! All the kings of Upper Egypt 

♦Again a Semitic word ; the Hebrew Ohil^ with the same meaning. 

t The translation of this sentence presents a difficulty which I 
can hardly think I have solved. There can, however, be no 
doubt of the general meaning, and that the author of the inscrip- 
tion intended to say what I have pointed out in my translation. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 8t 

were living in their magnificent buildings, and the 
kings of Lower Egypt enjoyed peace in their cities. 
All around the order of the land was threatened by 
disturbers. The armed force was wanting in people 
to assist them to give them an answer." 

Before we cast a glance at the neighbors of the 
Egyptians of the Delta, who carried on war and 
traffic with the inhabitants of Kemi, it seems useful 
to attend to a particular circumstance, which is not 
without importance for arriving at a right judgment 
on Semitism. 

Our advancing knowledge of the contents of the 
Egyptian papyri permits us, even at the present 
time, to cast an intelligent glance at the administra- 
tion of the eastern provinces, which had for its cen- 
tral point the town of foreigners, Zoan-Tanis, in the 
time of the great Ramessides and their successors. 
Hence went forth the commands of the king, or of 
the chief officials of the king, relating to the man- 
agement of business or the regulation of trade with 
' the foreign nations,' or, to use the Egyptian ex- 
pression for these, with the Pit. A portion of these 
consisted of the industrious settled population in 
towns and villages ; another portion served in the 
army of the pharaoh as infantry and cavalry, or us 
sailors ; others were used in the public works, the 
most laborious of which were the mines and quar- 



88 THE TRUE STORY OF 

ries. Over each larger and smaller division of 
^foreigners,' who with their names and origin were 
carried on the list of the royal archives, an official 
was placed, the so-called Hir-pit, or steward of the 
foreigners. His next superior w^as the captain of 
the district, or Adon (here also they used the Semitic 
form for this title), while as chief authority the Ab 
of the pharaoh (this was the dignity which Joseph 
held), or royal Wezer, issued orders in the name of 
the ruler. The authority over the foreign people 
lay in the hands of particular bailiffs (the so-called 
Mazai), who in the principal cities of the land had 
to look after and preserve public order, and who 
were under an Ur, or superior, by whom the carry- 
ing out of public buildings was frequently under- 
taken as an additional duty. I pass over a host of 
other officials, who, in the eastern provinces of the 
Delta as in the rest .of Egypt, carried on the admin- 
istration of the nomes, and I will only mention that 
frequently the foreign subjects were promoted to 
important offices in connection with the govern- 
ment. They seem to have been most appreciated as 
the bearers of official documents in the trade trans- 
actions between Egypt and the neighboring Pales- 
tine. The chief seats of this trade, the importance 
of which is shown by individual papyri, besides the 
frontier town of Ramses, seem to have been the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 89 

fortified places near the Mediterranean sea-coast, 
and further inland to the east the country of the 
Edomites and Amorites. 

We will embrace the opportunity we have long 
desired, in this place to consider the neighbors in 
Palestine, who continually carried on the most 
lively intercourse with the Egyptians in old time, 
and partially formed the foundation of the foreign 
inhabitants in the eastern provinces of the Delta. 
In the first rank stand the Char, or dial, by which 
name not only a people but the country they inhab- 
ited was also known, namely, those parts of west- 
ern Asia lying on the Syrian coast, and before all 
others the land of the Phoenicians. Richly laden 
ships went and came from the land of Char ; for the 
inhabitants of Char carried on a lively trade with 
the Egyptians, and seem, if we are not to mistrust 
the monuments and the rolls of the books, to have 
been a highly-esteemed and respectable people. 

Even the male and female slaves from Char were 
highly esteemed as merchandise, and were procured 
by distinguished Egyptians at a high price, w^hether 
for their own houses, or for service in the holy 
dwellings of the Egyptian gods. 

The land of the Char bears in the inscriptions 
another name, the most ancient mention of which 
is supported by all the testimony we could desire, 



90 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

namely, by witnesses in the first times of the eigh- 
teenth dynasty, about the year 1700 B. c. It is 
always called Kefa, or Keft, Kefeth, Kefthu, on the 
monuments. As at a certain time of Egyptian his- 
tory, namely, at the beginning of the reign of the 
first Seti, the territory of the Shasu extended as far 
as the town of Ramses, about a hundred years later, 
the seats of the people of Char, or the Phoenicians, 
were described as ' beginning with the fortress Zar 
(Tanis Ramses), and extending to Aupa, or Aup.' 
The last-mentioned name designates a place in the 
north of Palestine, without our being able more 
nearly to define its situation. On the other hand, 
the information is of very great importance, that 
these same Char had extended their seats quite into 
the heart of the Tanitic nome. We can, after the 
reasons we have given above, no longer be surprised 
that these descendants of Phoenician race consti- 
tuted on the eastern frontier of the Egyptian em- 
pire the real kernel of its fixed, industrious, artis- 
tic, and before all, its sea-faring and commercial 
population. In their habits and mode of life they 
were directly opposed to those wandering Shasu, 
the children of Esau, who traversed the deserts, 
and only remained with their herds so long on the 
property of pharaoh as the pastures suited them and 
supplied sustenance for themselves and their cattle. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 91 

The influence of the settled Char on Egyptian 
life is unmistakable in a thousand details, for a 
knowledge of which we have to thank the monu- 
ments, and particularly the little rolls of papyrus. 
Even the fortified town of Zoan, if we are not com- 
pletely deceived, seems to have been a very ancient 
habitation of the Phoenicians, since as well on the 
water side of it as by land, Zoan-Tanis constituted 
at the entrance to the Delta on the east, an impor- 
tant emporium of intercourse and trade with the 
whole of the rest of Egypt. The name of the city 
Zor, used as well as that of Zoan, reminds us too 
much of the celebrated Zor-Tyrus in the native 
country of the Phoenicians, for us to leave it unno- 
ticed in an account of the traces of the Phoenician 
race. 

The presence of the Char-Phoenicians in Egypt 
is, as already observed, made known to us in the 
most detailed manner by the inscriptions. I have 
already before spoken of those Semitic inhabitants 
who were employed in Egypt in all sorts of ofiicial 
service. To these in the first line belong the Phoe- 
nicians, or Char. Their importance culminates in 
the fact newly communicated to us by the monu- 
ments, that a Char-Phoenician, towards the end of 
the nineteenth dynasty, was able to conquer the 
throne and dominion over the Egyptians. 



92 THE TRUE STORY OF 

The Char spoke their own language, the Phoenician, 
upon the pecuUarities of which, in relation to the 
other Semitic languages, the Phoenician inscriptions 
that have been hitherto discovered have already 
preserved plentiful information. Of all the lan- 
guages spoken by Arab and western Asiatic nations, 
the monuments only notice the language of the 
Char, with a clear reference to its importance as the 
most cultivated representative of all the others. 
Whoever lived in Egypt spoke Egyptian (the lan- 
guage of the people of Kemi) ; whoever stayed in 
the south was obliged to speak the language of the 
Nahesi, or dark-colored people ; while those who 
went northwards to the Asiatic region must have 
been well acquainted with the language of the Phoe- 
nicians, in order in some degree to understand the 
inhabitants of the country. 

The historical fact that the Phcsnicians already, 
m the most ancient times of Egyptian history, 
formed a fixed settled population in the eastern 
provinces of the Egyptian empire, finds a kind of 
confirmation, or, if it is preferred, an explanation, 
from a remarkable circumstance. We mean the 
presence of the latest descendants of the old Phoe- 
nician race in the same seats which their forefathers 
occupied thousands of years ago. At this day the 
traveller meets on the shores of the Lake Menza- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 93 

leh, near the old towns and districts of Ramses and 
Pitom, a peculiar race of fishermen and sailors, whose 
manners and customs, whose historical traditions, 
however weak they may be, and whose ideas on 
religious matters, prove them to have been strangers 
to the real Egyptians. The inhabitants of this 
country, formerly Christians, w^ho call themselves 
by the name of Malakin, were restless and rebellious 
subjects of the Khalifs. 

The same inhabitants of the eastern provinces, 
who at this day navigate in their barks the shallow 
waters of Lake Menzaleh, and carry on the fishery 
as their chief business, are, as has been said, the 
descendants of the Phoenician inhabitants of the 
Tanitic and Sethroitic nomes. These were the peo- 
ple who ages ago gave to the fortified places of their 
Egyptian lands, and to the towns and villages which 
they once inhabited, and to the lakes and canals on 
which they navigated, those Semitic appellations by 
which we well know these places from the papyrus 
rolls. 

. What most marks their ancient and now forgotten 
origin, is their non-Egyptian countenance, so like 
the pictures of the Hyksos, with broad cheek-bones, 
and with daring pouting lips, which more than any- 
thing else marks the boatmen of Lake Menzaleh 
with the stamp of a foreign origin. 



94 THE TRUE STORY OF 

The history of the inhabitants of the eastern 
provinces lies buried and forgotten under the rubbish 
heaps of thousands of years. And yet their fathers 
were once the lords of the fate of Egypt, before 
whose rough strength the pharaohs bowed them- 
selves powerless, and were obliged for centuries to 
pass a furtive existence in the southern portions of 
the empire. Set had conquered Osiris. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 95 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE TIME OF FOEEIGN DOMINION. — JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 

AccoEDiNG to the Manethonian account which 
the Jewish historian Josephus has preserved to us 
by transcribing it, the Egyptian Netherlands were 
at a certain time overspread by a wild and rough 
people, which came from the countries of the East, 
overcame the native kings who dwelt there, and 
took possession of the whole country, without find- 
ing any great opposition on the part of the Egyp- 
tians. The account of it in Josephus is literally 
as follows : — 

*' There was a king called Timaius (or Timaos, 
Timios). In his reign, I know not for what reason, 
God was unpropitious, and people of low origin 
from the country of the East suddenly attacked the 
land, of which they easily and without a struggle 
gained possession. They overthrew those who ruled 
there, burned down the cities, and laid waste the 
^temples of the gods. Thej^ ill-treated all the in- 
habitants, for they killed some, and carried into 
captivity others, with their wives and children. 



96 THE TRUE STORY OF 



(C 



And they made one from the midst of them 
king, whose name was Salatis (Saltis, Silitis). He 
fixed his seat in Memphis, collected the taxes from 
the upper and lower country, and placed garrisons 
in the most important places. But he particularly 
fortified the eastern boundary, for he foresaw that 
the Assyrians, then the most powerful people, would 
undertake to make an attack on his kingdom. 

'' When he had found a town very conveniently 
situated, in the Sethroite nome to the east of the 
Bubastic branch of the Nile — on the grounds of an 
old mythical legend — it w^as called Auaris — he 
extended it, fortified it with very strong walls, and 
placed in it as a garrison two hundred and forty 
thousand heavy armed troops. 

'^ There he betook himself in summer, partly to 
watch over the distribution of provisions and the 
counting out their pay to his army, and partly also 
to strike fear into foreigners by making his army 
perform military manoeuvres. 

He died after he had reigned . . 19 years. 

His successor, by nameBnon (or Banon, 

Beon), reigned . . , . .44 years. 
After him another, Apachnan (or Apach- 

nas) 36 years, 7 months. 

After him Aphobis (or Aphophis, Apo- 

phis, Aphosis) 61 years. 

And Annas (or Janias, Jannas, Anan) . 50 years, 1 month. 

Last of all Asseth (or Aseth, Ases, Assis) 49 years, 2 months. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 97 

" These six were the first kings. They carried on 
war uninterruptedly with a view to destroy the land 
of Egypt to the roots. 

^^The whole people bore the name of Hyksos, that 
is, 'shepherd kings.' For hyk means in the holy 
language a king, sos in the dialect of the people a 
shepherd or shepherds. These syllables, when put 
together, make the word Hyksos. Some think they 
were Arabs." 

We will first of all turn our attention to the last 
statement, because it is of great importance for the 
fixing of the origin of this obscure people. If the 
kind reader will now recall to his thoughts what we 
have said about the Arab Bedouins, who inhabited 
the desert to the east of Egypt, and were called in 
Egyptian Shasu (also Shaus, Shauas), he will cer- 
tainly be of the same opinion as ourselves, that those 
who maintain the Arab origin of the Hyksos, must 
have drawn their information from a pure Egyptian 
source. For that word Sos answers completely to 
the old Egyptian Shasu, in which the sound sA,* 

* We will adduce further examples, borrowed from the work of 
Manetho, which leave no doubt that the Greek sign for s was used 
to represent the old Egyptian sound sh. Manetho transcribes the 
kings' names, Sheshonq as Sesonchis, Shabak as Sabakon, Shaba- 
tak as Sebichos. Also the name of king Chufu, which the Egyp- 
tians at the time of the composition of the work of Manetho 

7 



98 THE TRUE STORY OF 

which did not exist in Greek, according to usage 
was replaced by a simple s . Although Manetho, 
when he talks of the Hyksos, insists upon the mean- 
ing of shepherd, he could only do this in consequence 
of a strange confusion, since he turns to the new 
and popular language of his own time to explain the 
second syllable sos^ in which accidentally sos (or 
shos^ as the same word is still pronounced in Coptic) 
means a shepherd. 

We have already before remarked how from time 
to time the Bedouin people of the Shasu knocked at 
the eastern frontier door to obtain an entrance into 
Egypt. We have, on the ground of testimony from 
an inscription of the time of the nineteenth dynasty, 
stated the certainty of their presence on the Egyp- 
tian soil, when hunger drove them from their native 
hills and valleys to the eastern provinces of the 
Pharaonic empire. Like the modern Bedouins, the 
Shasu were a pastoral people in the full sense of the 
word. The old name of the race of the Shasu and 
Shaus-Bedouins in the course of time became equiva- 
lent in the popular language to 'shepherds,' that is, 
a wandering people, who occupied themselves in 
bringing up cattle, which formed the only wealth 

pronounced Shufu, was transcribed by Manetho Suphis. The 
older, and only correct pronunciation of this name has been care- 
fully preserved in the Cheops of Herodotus. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 99 

of the inhabitants of the desert in all times down to 
the present day. 

If the objection should be raised that the monu- 
ments (note well, those which have been discovered 
up to the present time) pass over in complete silence 
the name of Hyksos, this appearance of proof loses 
all its importance from the following consideration. 
By far the greater number of contemporary monu- 
ments which once existed as individual witnesses of 
the remembrance of the historical events under the 
rule of the foreign kings, have entirely disappeared 
from the surface of the Egyptian soil. It must be 
left to some lucky accident, that somewhere the 
stones now hidden or buried in the rubbish may 
come to the light of day, to give us new information 
about these portions of the history of the Egyptian 
empire, which are as obscure as they are important. 
The wonderland on the banks of the mighty Nile is 
a land of continual and startling discoveries, and will 
remain so for all coming times and generations. In 
the hope of finding important discoveries in the soil 
of Egypt in consequence of new excavations, we 
should esteem it unwise to give to our views the 
absolute form of a fixed unalterable judgment. But 
we may well be allowed to compare the information 
in the inscriptions of the few remains of the monu- 
ments which have been preserved with the ac- 



100 THE TRUE STORY OF 

counts which the Greeks have handed down to us, 
and from this to form our own opinion, and leave 
it to the consideration of the future, if by a happy 
accident our conjectures should be confirmed or 
refuted. 

At the present moment we expressly affirm the 
complete agreement of the name of Hyksos with the 
Egyptian double word we have mentioned above — 
Hak Shaus, that is, ' king of the Arabs,' or ' king of 
the shepherds,' — the probability of which is proved 
by the actual existence of a similar form in the 
term Hak Abisha, 'king (or prince) of the land of 
Abisha,' which we meet with in the hall of the tomb 
of Khnumhotep at Beni-Hassan. We will not, how- 
ever, on the other hand, maintain that the appella- 
tion Hak Shaus is the same which the bearers of it, 
of whatever descent they might boast, either formed 
of their own accord for themselves, or assumed on 
account of their office. It is far more probable that 
the Egyptians, when at last they drove away their 
tyrants of Semitic blood, gave these princes, who for 
several centuries had considered themselves as the 
legitimate kings of Egypt, the nickname Hak Shasu 
by way of a contemptuous expression. 

An ancient tradition furnishes an important addi- 
tion to the proofs of the" Arab origin of the hated 
Hyksos kings, which has been preserved by sev- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 101 

eral Arab historians of the Middle Ages. An Arab 
tradition tells us of a certain Sheddad (the name 
means a powerful ruler), the son of Ad, who made 
an irruption into Egypt, conquered the country, 
and extended his victorious campaign as far as the 
Straits of Gibraltar. He and his descendants, the 
founders of the Amalekite dynasty, are said to have 
maintained themselves more than two hundred years 
in Lower Egypt, where they made the town Awaris 
their capital.* 

According to another tradition, on the testimony 
of Africanus (one of those who extracted from the 
work of Manetho), the Hyksos kings were Phoeni- 
cians, who took possession of ^lemphis, and made 
the town of Auaris, or Awaris, in the Sethroite 
nome, their chief fortress. This tradition also is 
not without a certain air of trnth, if the reader will 
recall to mind what I ventured to state above 
regarding the Char-Phoenicians and the town Au- 
aris. The ancient seats of the Shasu-Arabs and of 
the Phoenicians extended towards the west as far 
as the same town of Zor-Tanis. The two races must 
therefore have been located together in the closest 
manner — the first as wanderers, the last as fixed 
inhabitants of the eastern provinces of the Egyptian 
empire, which were possessed by the foreigners. 

* Compare Fluegel's History of the Arabs, 2d ed. p. 11. 



102 THE TRUE STORY OF 

That the cultivated Khar in such a mixture of 
nations claimed the first rank, can scarcely need 
proof. Whether they or the Shasu were the origi- 
nators of this movement against the native kings of 
the empire, is a point for the decision of which sci- 
entific research has hitherto failed to discover the 
means. 

Let us leave entirely the ground of conjectures 
and probabilities, and turn now to the monuments, 
to see if they can furnish us with any existing traces 
of these foreigners to assist our researches. The 
answer is decidedly in the affirmative, but in such a 
general way that further inspection and examination 
is very necessary. The inscriptions designate this 
foreign people, which once ruled in Egypt till it 
was driven from the country by the Theban kings, 
by the name of Men, or Menti. According to the 
great table of nations on the walls of the temple of 
Edfou, those called Menti are inhabitants of the 
land of Asher. By the help of the demotic trans- 
lation of the inscription, in two languages, on the 
great stone of Tanis (known under the name of the 
decree of Canopus, a voucher, it is true, of the Pto- 
lemaic times), we can establish that such was the 
common name of Syria in the mouths of the Egyp- 
tians who were then living ; while the older name 
of the same country, in the hieroglyphic part of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 103 

stone, was Rutennu, with the addition, 'of the East.' 
In the different languages, and in the different times 
of history, the following names, Syria, Rutennu of 
the East, Asher, and Menti, were therefore synony- 
mous. We wish here to point out, although we 
leave the matter undecided, that Asher, in late 
Egyptian, may perhaps have meant the Semitic 
Ashur, or Assyria, and at last may have become 
contracted both as to the extent of country and 
common usage to the well-known geographical term 
Syria. 

Of high importance with regard to the foregoing 
question appears to us the derivation of the old 
national name Rutennu (or Lutennu), which, in the 
history of the eighteenth dynasty, aud in the war- 
like campaigns of the pharaohs in the east, plays 
such an important part. As to the geographical 
extent to which this name applied, we are fortu- 
nately so well informed that no mistake can ever 
occur again. In the great catalogue of the towns of 
western Asia conquered by Thutmes III., whose 
inhabitants, after the battle of Megiddo, submitted 
to the Egyptian rule, they are described in a gen- 
eral superscription as all the population of ' the 
upper land of the Rutennu.' This proves, in the 
most positive manner, that the name of Upper 
Rutennu must have included in its circumference 



104 THE TRUE STORY OF 

almost exactly the frontiers of the country which 
was later that of the twelve tribes of Israel. 

With this key in our hand, we can open many 
a closed door to the right understanding of the 
great movement of nations to the east of Egypt, 
so that we can survey with a clear glance the 
horizon of these migrations. If it is an undeniable 
fact, resulting from historical inquiry under the 
guidance of the monuments, that, immediately after 
the driving out of the Menti, the Egyptian kings of 
the eighteenth dynasty planned their campaigns of 
conquest against the countries of western Asia 
inhabited by the Rutennu, then there lay at the 
bottom of these obstinate constantly repeated in- 
roads a fixed feeling of revenge and retribution for 
losses and injuries received. The conviction forces 
itself upon us almost irresistibly, that the irrup- 
tion of the foreigners into Egypt was made by 
the Syrians, who, in their campaigns through the 
arid deserts, found in the Shasu-Arabs welcome 
allies who well knew the country. And here I 
am reminded of a similar alliance which Cambyses 
formed with the Arabs in his campaign against 
Egypt. They found also in the Semitic inhabitants 
settled in the eastern provinces brothers of the same 
race, with whose assistance they succeeded in giv- 
ing a death-blow to the Egyptian empire, and of 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 105 

robbing it for centuries of all power of action and 
independent life. 

The present state of Egyptian inquiry, concern- 
ing the history of the Hyksos, has enabled us to find 
an answer to a number of questions which stand in 
close connection with these matters, and embrace 
the following facts : — 

1. A certain number of non-Egyptian kings of 
foreign origin, belonging to the nation of the Menti, 
ruled for a long time in the eastern portion of the 
Delta. 

2. The foreign princes had, besides the town 
Zoan, chosen as the capital of their power the 
typhonic place Hauar-Auaris, on the east side of 
the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, within what was 
called later the Sethroite nome, and had provided 
it with strong fortifications. 

3. The foreigners had, besides the customs and 
manners, adopted the official language and the holy 
writing of the Egyptians. The whole arrangement 
of their court was formed on the Egyptian model. 

4. These same foreign kings were patrons of art. 
Egyptian artists made, according to the old pattern 
and according to the prescribed usage of their fore- 
fathers, the monuments in honor of the foreign 
tyrants ; yet, in the statues of them, they were 
obliged to give way with regard to the expression 



106 THE TRUE STORY OF 

of the foreign countenances, the peculiar arrange- 
ment of the beard, and the head-dress and other 
deviations of foreign costume. 

6. These foreign kings honored, as the supreme 
god of their newly-acquired country, the son of the 
heavenly goddess Nut, the god Set or Sutekh, with 
the additional name Nub, ' gold,' or ' the golden,' — 
according to the Egyptian mode of viewing things, 
the origin of S,ll that is bad and perverse in the seen 
and unseen world ; the opponent of what is good, 
and the enemy of light. In the towns of Zoan 
and Auaris the foreigners had constructed to the 
honor of this god splendid temples and other monu- 
ments, especially sphinxes, constructed of stone 
from Syene. 

6. In all probability one of the foreign lords was 
the originator of the new era, which most likely 
began with the first year of his reign. Up to the 
reign of the second Ramses, four hundred full years 
had elapsed of this reckoning, which was acknowl- 
edged by the Egyptians. 

7. The Egyptians were indebted to the stay of 
the foreigners, and to their social intercourse with 
them, for much useful knowledge. Especially the 
horizon of their artistic views was enlarged, and 
new forms and shapes were introduced into Egyp- 
tian art, the Semitic origin of which is obvious from 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 107 

a single glance at these productions. The winged 
Sphinx may be reckoned as a notable example of 
this new direction of art introduced from abroad. 

We remarked above that the number of the 
monuments which contain memorials of the time of 
the Hyksos is very limited ; and we must add that 
the names of the Hyksos kings, with which they 
ornamented their own memorial-stones (statues, 
sphinxes, and similar works), or those of earlier 
Egyptian kings of the times before them, have 
arrived to us half obliterated or carefully chiselled 
out, so that the decipherment of the faint traces 
which remain has to struggle with great difficulties. 
These important lacunae in the study of the Egyp- 
tian monuments find a sufficient explanation in the 
proved and easily understood practice of the kings 
of native race who ascended the throne after the 
expulsion of the foreigners, and who particularly 
set themselves carefully to obliterate all remem- 
brance of the hated princes, and to destroy and 
annihilate their works. 

The names of the Hyksos kings, which are en- 
graved on the more than life-size statue at Tell 
Mukhdam, the border of the stand of the colossal 
sphinxes in the Louvre, the lion found near Bag- 
dad, the sacrificial stone in the Museum of Boulak, 
are scratched out with great care, so as to be 



108 THE TRUE STORY OF 

almost undistinguishable ; and science has to thank 
a happy accident for the preservation and decipher- 
ment of the names of two Hyksos kings. These 
are : 

1. The king, whose first cartouche contains the 
name Ra aa-ab-taui, and whose second cartouche 
encloses the family name Apopi, or Apopa ; and, 

2. King Nubti, or Nub, with the official name 
Set aa-pe-huti (properly, 'Set the powerful'). 

The name of the first-mentioned king, which 
would be pronounced in the Memphitic dialect 
Aphophi, differs little from that of the Shepherd 
king Aphobis, or Aphophis, Apophis, which, accord- 
ing to the Manethonian tradition, was the fourth of 
the above-named Hyksos kings. We will also not 
withhold the remark, that many Egyptians of these 
times call themselves Apopi, or Apopa, in the same 
way, with a certain predilection. 

The names which designate the other Hyksos 
kings are in a striking manner similar in sound with 
the names which the god ' Set-Nub the powerful ' is 
accustomed to bear on the Egyptian monuments. 
Was it the intention of the foreign prince to be 
prayed to as the god Set? 

In the deep obscurity in which a pitiless fate has 
hidden the history of the irruption and the domin- 
ion of the Hyksos kings in Egypt, a ray of light is 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 109 

visible onlj^ towards the close of the tyranny of the 
foreigners. 

In a roll of papyrus in the British Museum (Sal- 
lier, No. 1) there is, although unfortunately much 
interrupted with lacunae, the beginning of an his-' 
torical description which is connected with the 
names of the foreign king Apopi and the Egyptian 
underking Ra-Sekenen (the victorious Sun-god Ra), 
both contemporaries. It is the glory of that master 
of science, E. de Rouge, too soon lost to us, to have 
first recognized the high value of this writing in 
its full importance. It begins with the following 
words : — 

(I. 1) '' It came to pass that the land of Kemi 
belonged to enemies. And nobody was lord in the 
day when that happened. At that time there was 
indeed a king Ra-Sekenen, but he was only a Hak 
of the town of the south, but the enemies sat in 
the town of the Amu, and there was king (Ur) (2) 
Apopi in the town of Auaris. And the whole world 
brought him its productions, also the northern land 
did the same with all the good things of Ta-meri ; 
and the king Apopi (3) chose the god Set for his 
divine master, and he did not serve any of the gods 
which were worshipped in the whole land. He 
built him a temple of beautiful work, to last a long 
time [. . . and the king] (4) Apopi (appointed) 



110 THE TRUE STORY OF 

feasts (and) days to offer (sacrifices) at each time 
to the god Sutech." 

The king Ra-Sekenen in ' the city of the south ' 
had, according to all appearance, incurred the par- 
ticular displeasure of the tyrant of Auaris, who 
intended to hurl him from the throne, and sought 
for means and pretexts to carry out his intention. 

There had evidently before this begun a corre- 
spondence between the tyrant in the north and the 
Hak in the southern land, in which the first-named 
among other things required of the last to give up 
the worship of his gods, and to worship Amon-Ra 
alone as the only divinity of the country. Ra- 
Sekenen had declared himself prepared for all, but 
had added a proviso to , his letter, in which he 
expressly declared, to allow him to speak for him- 
self (II. 1) " that he was not able to promise to 
serve any other of the gods which were worshipped 
in the whole country but Amon-Ra, the king of the 
gods alone." 

A new message to the unfortunate Hak of the 
southern city was deliberated upon and agreed to 
by king Apopi. The papyrus announces this in 
these words : — '' Many da)^s later after these events 
(II. 2) King Apopi sent to the governor of the 
town in the land of the south this message, . . . 
which his secretaries had advised him. (3) And 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, HI 

the messenger of Apopi betook himself to the gov- 
ernor of the city of the south. And (the messen- 
ger) was brought before the governor of the city of 
the south. (4) He spoke thus, when he spoke to 
the messenger of King Apopi : ' Who sent thee 
here to this city of the south ? How hast thou 
come to spy out ? ' " 

The messenger of king Apopi thus addressed, 
first answered the governor in these simple words, 
' King Apopi it is who sends to thee ; ' and there- 
upon delivers his message, the particular contents 
of which are very disquieting to the first-mentioned 
personage. It was a question of stopping a canal. 
The first remark of the messenger that he had not 
taken sleep either day or night, until he had ful- 
filled his mission, mast appear like scorn. The 
writer paints the situation of the Hak with few 
words, but those full of meaning. 

'' (6) And the governor of the town in the south 
was for a long time troubled so that he could not 
(7) answer the messenger of King Apopi." 

But he nerved himself and made a speech to the 
messenger. Unfortunately the chief contents of it 
have been torn out by the destruction of the papyrus 
at this place. After the foreign messenger had been 
hospitably entertained, he betook himself back to 
the court of king Apopi, while Ra-Sekenen as 



112 THE TRUE STORY OF 

quickly as possible called his friends around him. 
The papyrus thus relates what occurred : 

" (11) And the messenger of King Apopi returned 
to the place where his lord tarried (III.-,1). There- 
upon the governor of the town of the south called 
unto him the great and chief men, as the command- 
ers and captains who accompanied him, (2) in order 
(to communicate) to them the message which King 
Apopi had sent to him, but they all of one accord 
were silent through great grief, and wist not what 
to answer him good or bad." 

After the following words, ' then sent King Apopi 
to the,' the writer breaks off in the middle of a sen- 
tence, without satisfying the curiosity of his read- 
ers two-and-thirty centuries afterwards. For next 
comes the beginning of the letters of Pentaur, the 
poet of the well-known heroic song of the great 
deeds of Rarnses II. at Kadesh. 

Although this precious writing is frequently, in 
the most important passages of the narrative of 
Apopi, interrupted through holes and "rents, owing 
to the splitting of the papyrus, still what remains is 
amply sufScient to make known to us the persons, 
the places, and the circumstances of this historical 
drama. 

King Apopi meets us as chief hero. His royal 
residence is in Auaris. The enemies, foreigners, 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 113 

have taken possession of Egypt. Its inhabitants are 
obliged to pay a tax of their possessions and sub- 
stance to the foreign tyrants. Apopi worships his 
own divinity, the god Sutech, who is already known 
to us as the Egyptian expression of the Semitic Baal, 
especially of Baal Zapuna, the Baal-zephon of Holy 
Scripture. He builds a splendid temple to his god, 
and appoints festivals and offerings for him. 

In the south of the land, in No, ' the town ' of 
the south, that is in Thebes, the capital of Patoris, 
' the region of the south ' (the biblical Pathros), 
there sat an offshoot of the oppressed pharaohs, Ra- 
Sekenen, only invested with the title of Hak, or 
sub-king. 

King Apopi is the all-powerful lord, the general 
ruler of the land. Complaisant learned men belong 
to his court, who bear the remarkable title of Rechi- 
chet, that is, the experts.* They give counsel to the 
king, bad counsel as it appears, since they induce 
him to send a messenger to the sub-king in No, with 
still more severe demands worthy of a Cambyses. 
The messenger enjoys no rest, but day and night 
hurries to the southern land. 

The sub-king, Ra-Sekenen, receives him with the 

* On the stone of Tanis the Greek translator renders this term 
by the well-known word Hierogrammats^ or Temple scribes. 

8 



114 THE TRUE STORY OF 

same question which Joseph, his contemporary, put 
to his own brethren when they came down to Egypt 
to buy corn, since he said to them, ' Whence come 
ye ? Ye are spies, and ye are come here to see 
where tlie land is open.' 

After the Hak had received all the communica- 
tions of the tyrant Apopi from the mouth of his 
messenger, he was deeply moved by their dangerous 
import. The great lords and chief men of his court 
were summoned to a council ; and the leaders also 
of the army, the Uau or officers, and the Hauti or 
captains, took part in it. 

But good counsel is dear. No one dared to 
make any proposal from the fear of unfortunate 
consequences. 

Such is an abstract of this remarkable document. 
We may rest assured, even without knowing the 
conclusion of the whole story, that the autlior of it 
must have aimed, by his description, at portraying 
something more important than the humiliation of a 
native Hak. The subject without doubt really was 
the history of the uprising of the Egyptians against 
the yoke of the foreigners. In order to teach us the 
cause and meaning of this, the unknown narrator 
begins his history of the war of liberation, which 
was brought about in the way we have mentioned, 
by a description of the unfortunate position of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 115 

empire. His history, which began so sadly, ends 
happily, and the actual proofs from the monuments 
bear out his fortunate conclusion. 

In order to find the proofs from the monuments, 
let us betake ourselves to the land of the south, let 
us pass by the towns of Thebes, Hermonthis, and 
Latopolis, on both sides of the stream, and let us 
stop on the right bank, in sight of the most ancient 
walls of the city of El-Kab. This discovers to us 
the position and extent of the former capital of 
the third upper Egyptian nome, which the Greeks 
designated as the town of Eileithyia, the ' goddess 
presiding over births,' and the Romans as the town 
of Lucina in their description of Egyptian places. 
In the background towards the east there rise rockj^- 
hills, with long rows of tombs, whose dark openings 
appear to the traveller like the broken windows of 
a ruined castle. 

We will betake ourselves to the chambers of the 
tombs. 

In truly venerable forms, which seem to people 
the chambers of the dead, we greet the contempo- 
raries of the Hyksos kings, whose progeny belonged 
to the heroes of the great war of liberation of the 
Egyptians from the tyranny of the foreigners. 

Let us enter these chambers of the dead, which a 
grandson has dedicated to the hero Aahmes, the 



116 THE TRUE STORY OF 

son of Abana-Baba, and his whole house as the 
last memorial of their existence and of their deeds. 
The walls of the narrow chamber are covered by a 
widelj^-spread genealogical tree of his race, which 
has suffered much injury. 

Aahmes, the son of Baba-Abana, and his daugh- 
ter's son Pahir, form the most important persons of 
the genealogical tree. 

We will lay before the reader a faithful transla- 
tion of the inscription in which Aahmes portrayed 
in the old speech the course of his life as a picture 
of the time for posterity. The actual author of the 
inscription is ' the son of his daughter, who exe- 
cuted the work in this sepulchral chamber, in order 
to perpetuate the name of the father of his mother, 
the master of the drawing art of Amon, Pahir.' 

The following are the words of the inscription as 
the clever Pahir executed it : 

1. The deceased chief of the sailors, Aahmes, a son of 
Abana 

2. speal^s thus. I speak to you, to all people, and I 
give 3^ou to know the honorable praise which was given 
to me. I was presented with a golden chain eight times 
in the sight 

3. of the whole land, and with male and female slaves 
in great numbers. I had a possession of many acres. 
The surname of ' the brave ' which I gained never van- 
ished awav 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, HY 

4. in this land. He speaks also further. I have com- 
pleted my 3^outhfal wandering in the town of Nukheb. 
M}^ father was a captain of the deceased Ra Sekenen, 
Baba 

5. son of Roant, was his name. Then I became cap- 
tain in his place on the ship ' Th6 Calf/ in the time of the 
lord of the country, Aahmes, the deceased. 

6. I was still 3'oung and unmarried, and was girded 
with the garment of the band of youths. Still, after I 
had prepared for myself a house, I was taken 

7. on the ship ' The North,' because of my strength. 
It was my duty to accompany the great lord — life, pros- 
perity, and health attend him ! — on foot, wlien he rode 
in his chariot. 

8. They besieged the town of Auaris. My duty was 
to be A^aliantly on foot before his holiness. Then was I 
changed 

9. to the ship 'Ascent in Memphis.' They fought by 
sea on the lake Pazetku of Auaris. I fought in a strug- 
gle with fists, and 

10. I gained a hand. This was shown to the herald 
of the king. The3^ gaA^e me a golden present for my 
bravery. After that a new fight arose in this place, and 
anew I fought in a struggle with fists 

11. in that place, and I gained a hand. The}^ gave me 
a golden present another time. And they fought at the 
place Takem to the south of the town (Auaris) . 

12. I gained of hving prisoners a grown-up man. I 
went into the water — him also bringing to remain aside 
from the road to 

13. the town. I went, firml}^ holding him, through the 
water. The}^ announced me to the herald of the king. 
Then I was presented with a golden present again. They 



118 THE TRUE STORY OF 

14. conquered Auaris. I gained in that place prison- 
ers, a grown-up man and three women, which makes in 
all three heads. His holiness gave them to me for my 
possession as slaves. 

15. They besieged the town Sherohan in the sixth 3^ear. 
His holiness took it. I brought booty home from here, 
two women and a hand. 

16. They gave me a golden present for valor. In ad- 
dition, the prisoners from it were given to me as slaves. 
After then that his holiness had mown down the Syrians 
of the land of Asia, 

17. he went against Khont-Hon-nofer to smite the 
mountaineers of Nubia. His holiness made a great 
destruction among them. 

18. I carried booty away from that place, two living 
grown-up men and three hands. I was presented with a 
golden gift another time ; they also gave me three female 
slaves. 

19. His holiness descended the stream. His heart Avas 
joyful because of brave and victorious deeds. He had 
taken possession of the south and of the north land. 
There came an enemy from the southern region. 

20. He approached. His advantage was the number 
of his people. The gods of the southern land were against 
his fist. His holiness found him at the water Tent-ta-tot. 
His holiness brought him forth 

21. as a living prisoner. All his people brought booty 
back. I brought back two young men, when I had cut 
them off from the ship of the enemy. They 

22. gave me fi\Q heads, besides my share of five hides 
of arable land in my town. It happened thus to all the 
ship's crew in the same way. Twice 

23. there came that enemy whose name was Teta. He 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 119 

had assembled with him a bad set of fellows. His holi- 
ness annihilated him and his men, so that they no longer 
existed. So there were 

24. given to me three people and five hides of arable 
land in my town. I conveyed by water the deceased king 
Amenhotep I., when he went up against Kush to extend 

25. the borders of Egj^pt. He smote these Nubians 
by means of his warriors. Being pressed closely, they 
could not escape. Bewildered 

26. they remained in the place just as if they were 
nothing. Then I stood at the head of our warriors, and 
I fought as was right. His holiness admired my valor. 
I gained two hands, 

27. and brought them to his holiness. They sought 
after their inhabitants and their herds. I brought down 
a living prisoner and brought him to his holiness. I 
brought his holiness in two days to Eg3'pt 

28. from Khnumt-hirt (that is, the upper spring). 
Then I was presented with a golden gift. Then I 
brought forward two female slaves, besides those which 
lied 

29. to his holiness, and I was raised to the dignity of 
a ' champion of the prince.' I conveyed the deceased 
King Thutmes I., when he ascended by water to Chont- 
hon-nofer, 

30. to put an end to the strife among the inhabitants, 
and to stop the attacks on the land side. And I was 
brave (before him) on the water. It went badly on the 
(attack) 

31. of the ship on account of its upsetting. They 
raised me to the rank of a captain of the sailors. His 
holiness — may life, prosperity, and health be allotted to 
him ! — 



120 THE TRUE STORY OF 

32. (Here follows a rent, which, according to the con- 
text, is to be filled up in such a manner as to show that a 
new occasion calls the king to war against the people of 
the south.) 

33. His holiness raged against them like a panther, and 
his holiness slung his first dart, which remained sticking 
in the body of his enemy. He 

34. fell fainting down before the royal diadem. There 
was then in a short time a (great defeat) , and their people 
were taken away as living enemies. 

35. And his holiness travelled downwards. All nations 
were in his power. And this wretched king of the Nu- 
bian people found himself bound on the fore part of the 
ship of his holiness, and he was placed on the ground 

36. in the town of Thebes. After this his holiness be- 
took himself to the land of the Kutennu, to cool his anger 
among the inhabitants of the land. His holiness reached 
the land of Naharina. 

37. His holiness found — life, prosperit}^, and health 
to him! — these enemies. He ordered the battle. His 
holiness made a great slaughter among them. 

38. The crowd of the living prisoners was innumerable, 
which his majesty carried away in consequence of his vic- 
tory. And behold, I was at the head of our warriors. 
His holiness admired my valor. 

39. I carried off a chat^iot of war and its horses, and 
those which were upon it, as living prisoners, and brought 
them to his holiness. Then I was afterwards presented 
with gold. 

40. Now I have passed many days and reached a gray 
old age. My lot will be that of all men upon the earth. 
[I shall go down into the lower world, and be placed in 
the] coflSn*, which I have made for myself. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 121 

The hard time of distress and tyranny was now 
past for the Egyptian people. The reign of oppres- 
sion was at once broken up, when Auaris had fallen, 
and another town of the Hyksos, the fortress Shero- 
han, had been taken by storm. In the sixth year of 
the reign of king Aahmes, the founder of the eigh- 
teenth house of the pharaohs, Kemi was at length 
freed from the long oppression of the foreigner, and 
the armed soldiers of the pharaoh passed trium- 
phantly through the lands of the south and the east 
of Egypt, to conquer what had been lost, and ' to wash 
their heart,' that is, to cool their anger against the 
enemies from a foreign land. Yet we must not fore- 
stall the events, the true portraying of which the 
simple narratives of two warriors of those days have 
handed down to us, and we will next cast another 
glance at the conclusion of the seventeenth dynasty. 

King Taa III., with the surname of ' the brave,' 
the predecessor of the Pharaoh Aahmes, the con- 
queror of Auaris, reigned in No-Thebes. His atten- 
tion was directed to the creation of a Nile flotilla, 
with the intention one day of conquering Auaris, 
which was under the dominion of the Lower Egyp- 
tian Netherlands. 

His successor, of the name of Kames, seems only 
to have reigned a short time. He was the husband 
of the much venerated queen Aah-hotep, whose 



122 THE TRUE STORY OF 

coffin with the golden ornaments on the body was 
some years ago found by some Theban agriculturists 
in the ancient necropolis of No, buried only a few 
feet below the surface of the soil.* These venerable 
artistic and historically precious remains of Egyp- 
tian antiquity, were delivered over to the Museum 
of Boolaq. 

* The cover of the coffin has the shape of a mummy, and it is 
gilt above and below. The holy royal asp decks the brow. The 
eyelids are gilt. The white of the eyes is represented by quartz, 
and the pupils by black glass. A rich imitation necklace covers 
the breast and shoulders ; the Urseus serpent and the vulture — 
the holy symbols of the Upper and the Lower land of Kemi — lie 
below the necklace. A closed pair of wings seems to protect the 
rest of the body. At the soles of the feet stand the statues of the 
mourning goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Tlie inscription in the 
middle row gives us the name of the queen, Aah-hotep, that is, 
* servant of the moon.' 

When the coffin was opened, there were found between the 
linen coverings precious weapons and ornaments : daggers, a 
golden axe, a chain with three large golden bees, and a breast- 
plate. On the body itself was found a golden chain with a scara- 
baeus attached, armlets, a fillet for the brow, and other objects. 
Two little ships in gold and silver, bronze axes, and great bangles 
for tlie ankles, lay immediately upon the wood of the coffin. 

The richest and the most precious of the ornaments showed the 
shields of the Pharaoh Aahmes. He bears on them the surname 
of Nakht, that is, * the brave or victorious.' Without doubt, then, 
Queen Aah-hotep was buried in Thebes during the reign of her 
son Aahmes. Mention has already been made of the tomb of her 
royal husband at Thebes. Aah-hotep is therefore the proper an- 
cestress of the eighteenth dynasty. It was her son Aahmes who 
was destined to rise up as the avenger of his native country for 
the shame and oppression which it had so long endured. If there- 
fore Apopi was the pharaoh that honored Joseph, Aahmes was the 
king that succeeded him. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 123 

And yet a strange enigma covers this age of 
shame, the veil of which we are not yet able to lift. 
For on a minute examination of the monuments of 
the times of the seventeenth and eighteenth dynas- 
ties, many well-founded reflections force themselves 
upon us involuntaril}' ; since, in fact, it would seem 
as if the hatred of the Egyptians against the Hyksos 
kings had not been so intense as the story handed 
down by Manetho appears to represent it. We of 
course except, when we speak of the Egyptians, the 
legitimate but oppressed kings of ' the region of the 
south,' in the Upper country, to whom the foreign 
tyrants in the Lowlands must have appeared in no 
agreeable light. 

Between the Egyptian and Semitic races — and 
whatever may have been the exact complexion and 
descent of the latter — there certainly was no deep- 
rooted hereditary enmity, as the interpreters would 
make us believe. There was, indeed, a hatred on 
the part of the Theban race of kings, to whom their 
humiliation by the foreigners appeared all the more 
unendurable, as they had not the strength and 
power to free themselves from their dependence on 
the foreign lords of the Netherlands. They had 
only at their command the weapon of the weaker 
against the stronger — namely, an exaggeration of 
the real existing relations between them — by pic- 



124 THE TRUE STORY OF 

turing the foreigners as relentless against everything 
native. Hence they derived consolation, and an 
excuse for their own incapability to shake off the 
yoke, and to regain the firm possession of the whole 
kingdom. 

We will simply put the question, If those foreign 
kings were in fact desecrators of the temples, devas- 
tators and destroyers of the works of bygone ages, 
how is it that these ancient works, although only 
the last remains of them, still exist, and especially 
in the chief seats of the Hyksos dominion ; and 
further, that these foreign kings allowed their names 
to be engraved as memorial witnesses on the works 
of the native pharaohs ? Instead of destroying they 
preserved them, and sought by appropriate measures 
to perpetuate themselves and their remembrance on 
the monuments already existing of former rulers. 

Zoan-Tanis, the capital of the Egyptian eastern 
provinces, with its world of temples and statues of 
the times of the sixth, twelfth, and thirteenth dynas- 
ties, had so little to suffer from the Hyksos, that on 
the contrary these princes thought it incumbent 
upon them to increase tlie splendor of this vast 
temple-town by their own constructions, although 
in a Semitic style of execution. 

To the Theban kings of the eighteenth dynasty 
must first be attributed the doubtful praise of mak- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 125 

ing war on the dead stones as a vengeance against 
the Hyksos kings, which their forefathers had in 
vain sought to wreak on the living monarchs. To 
destroy the monuments of the opposition kings, to 
annihilate their names and titles so as to render 
them unrecognizable, and to falsify historical truth 
by inscribing their own names, such was the system 
invented by the Egyptian pharaohs, who set about 
their work with such success as nearly to root out 
from the face of the earth the contemporary memo- 
rials of the Hyksos kings. We have to thank this 
persecution for the difficulties which lie in the way 
of restoring the history of the most ancient domina- 
tion of the foreigners in Egypt. 

Before we conclude this chapter, perhaps we may 
be allowed to make some remarks on the relation, 
in point of time, of these historical events, with the 
stay of the Hyksos on one side, and on the other 
side with the stay of the children of Israel, on Eg)^p- 
tian soil. We have already made mention of a 
memorial stone of the time of the second Ramses 
found in Tanis, the inscription on which commences 
with the following indication of its date : ' In the 
year 400, on the 4th day of the month Mesori of 
King Nub.' As on the basis of the newest and 
best inquiries into the question of old Egyptian 
chronology we fix the reign of Ramses II. at the 



126 THE TRUE STORY OF 

year 1350 B. c. as a mean rate between various pro- 
posals, the reign of the Hyksos king Nub, and prob- 
ably the beginning of his reign, would fall about 
the year 1750 B. c, that is, four hundred years 
before Ramses II. Although we are completely in 
the dark as to what place king Nub occupied in the 
succession of the princes of his house, yet the num- 
ber mentioned has a certain importance in fixing an 
approximative date for the stay of the foreign kings 
in Egypt. This importance becomes much enhanced 
by its very clear relation to a similar statement in 
Holy Writ in relation to the total duration of the 
stay of the children of Israel in Egypt. According 
to this statement (Exodus xii. 40) the Hebrews 
from the time of the immigration of their ancestor 
Jacob till the exodus had remained four hundred 
and thirty years in Egypt. In another place (Gen- 
esis XV. 13) the duration of their stay is expressed 
by the round number of four hundred years. Now, 
as according to general acceptation the exodus from 
Egypt took place after the death of Ramses II., the 
pharaoh of the oppression, the year 1300 will ap- 
proximately correspond to the time of the exodus 
in the reign of Mineptah, the son and successor of 
Ramses II. If we add, therefore, four hundred and 
thirty j^ears as the expression for the total duration 
of the stay of the Hebrews in Egypt, we arrive at 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 127 

the year 1780 b. c. as the approximative date of the 
immigration of Jacob into Egypt, and for the time 
of the official career of his son Joseph at the court 
of pharaoh. In other words, we arrive at the con- 
clusion that the time of Joseph (1730 B. c.) must 
have fallen in the time of the Hyksos' domination, 
about the reign of the previously mentioned foreign 
prince, Nub (1750). 

This singular coincidence of numbers, as we 
openly admit, appears to us to have a higher value 
than the data fixed on the grounds of particular 
calculations of the chronological tables of Manetho 
and the fathers of the church. For these numbers 
neither change nor rectify the great building of 
general chronology. Their importance is of quite 
a different character. Independently of every kind 
of arrangement and combination of numbers, they 
prove the probability of a fixed date for a very 
important section of the general history of the 
world on the grounds of two chronological data, 
which in a most striking way correspond with one 
another, and of which each separately has its origin 
in an equally trustworthy and respectable source. 

The supposition that Joseph was sold into Egypt 
and afterwards rose to great honor under the HyK 
SOS, as results from the chronological relations we 
have mentioned, receives fresh support for its prob- 



128 ^^^^ TRUE STORY OF 

ability from a Christian tradition preserved by V. 
Syncellus. According to this tradition ' received by 
the whole world,' Joseph ruled the land in the reign 
of king Aphophis (Apopi of the monuments), whose 
age within a few years corresponds with the com- 
mencement of the eighteenth dynasty. 

We have great satisfaction in adding another very 
remarkable and clear confirmation of our remarks 
upon the time of Joseph and his master the pharaoh. 
Upon the grounds of an old Egyptian inscription 
hitherto unknown, whose author must have been a 
contemporary of Joseph and his family, we hope to 
adduce a proof that Joseph and the Hyksos cannot 
henceforth be separated from one another. 

As a previous remark we will recall to the recol- 
lection of our readers the well-known fact that iii 
the days of the patriarch in Egypt a seven years' 
famine occurred, the consequence of a deficiency of 
water in the overflowing of the Nile at that time. 

This inscription, which appears to us so impor- 
tant, exists in one of the tombs at El-Kab, of which 
we have before spoken more particularly. From 
the peculiarities of the language, and from the 
style of the internal pictorial decoration of the rock 
chambers, but principally from the name of its 
former possessor, Baba, we may consider that the 
tomb was erected in the times immediately preced- 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 129 

ing the eighteenth dynasty. Although no royal car- 
touche ornaments the walls of the tomb to give us 
certain information about the exact time of its erec- 
tion, yet the following considerations are calculated 
to inform us on this point, and fortunately to fill up 
the gaps. 

The name of the old possessor of the tomb, Baba, 
is already well known to us. Among the members 
of the great family of the times of the thirteenth 
dynasty, whose genealogical tree we have before laid 
before our readers, and the greater number of whose 
tombs are situated in the rocky city of the dead at 
El-Kab, Baba appears in the third generation as the 
additional name of a certain Sebek-tut, the father 
of queen Nubkhas. In the genealogical tree of the 
family of the Captain Aahmes at El-Kab the name 
Baba appears on another occasion, and also as the 
second appellation of our hero, Abana, a captain 
under king Ra-Sekenen (Taa III.). Unless we are 
mistaken, it is this Baba whose tomb, situated near 
that of Aahmes at El-Kab, promises us important 
disclosures. For the whole descendants of Aahmes, 
children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchil- 
dren, repose in their ancestors' tomb, and in the 
excavations of the rock which Pahir, once the gov- 
ernor of Eileithyia, had prepared for himself and 
them. We should, however, in vain look round the 
9 



180 THE TRUE STORY OF 

sepulchral chambers of the ancestors of Baba, were 
it not for the rock tomb of a Baba in the neighbor- 
hood of that we have already mentioned. The in- 
scription, which exists in the hall of sacrifice of this 
tomb on the wall opposite to the door of entrance, 
contains the following simple childlike representa- 
tion of his happy existence on earth, owing to his 
great riches in point of children : 

'' The chief at the table of princes, Baba, the 
risen again, he speaks thus : I loved my father, I 
honored my mother ; my brother and my sisters 
loved me. I stepped out of the door of my house 
with a benevolent heart ; I stood there with refresh- 
ing hand, and splendid were the preparations of 
what I collected for the feast-day. Mild was (mj^) 
heart, free from noisy anger. The gods bestowed 
upon me a rich fortune on earth. The city wished 
me health and a life full of freshness. I punished 
the evil-doers. The children which stood opposite 
to me in the town during the days which I have 
fulfilled were small as well as great, 60 ; there were 
prepared for them as many beds, chairs (?) as manj^-, 
tables (?) as many. They all consumed 120 Epha 
of Durra, the milk of 3 cows, 62 goats, and 9 she- 
asses, of balsam a hin, and of oil 2 jars. 

'' My speech may appear a joke to some opponent. 
But I call as witness the god Month that my speech 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 131 

is true. I had all this prepared in my house ; in 
addition I gave cream in the pantry and beer in the 
cellar in a more than sufficient number of hin 
measures. 

"I collected the harvest,- a friend of the harvest 
god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. And 
now when a famine arose, lasting many years, I 
issued out corn to the city at each famine." * 

There ought not to be the smallest doubt as to 
whether the last words of the inscription relate to 
an historical fact or not; to something definite or 
something only general. Strongly as we are inclined 
to recognize a general way of speaking in the 
narrative of Ameni, where ^ years of famine ' are 
spoken of, here we are compelled by the context 
of the report before us to understand the term ' the 
many years ' of the famine which arose as relating to 
a definite historical time. For famines following 
one another on account of a deficiency of water in 
the overflowing of the Nile were of the greatest 
rarity, and history knows and mentions only one 
example of it, namely, the seven years' famine of 
the pharaoh of Joseph. Besides, Baba (or if the 
term is preferred, the Babas, for the most part the 
contemporaries of the thirteenth and seventeenth 
dynasties), about the same time as Joseph exercised 

* Or also, ' to each hungry person.' 



132 THE TRUE STORY OF 

his office under one of the Hyksos kings, lived and 
worked under the native king Ra-Sekenen (Taa III.) 
in the old town of El-Kab. The only just conclu- 
sion is that the many years of famine in the time 
of Baba must precisely correspond with the seven 
years of famine under Joseph's pharaoh, one of the 
shepherd kings. 

We leave it to the judgment of the reader to 
arrive at a conclusion on the probability of a clear 
connection between the two diflPerent reports on the 
same extraordinary occurrence. The simple words 
of the biblical account and the inscription in the 
tomb of Baba are too clear and convincing, to leave 
any room for reproach on the ground of possible 
error. The account in Holy Scripture of the eleva- 
tion of Joseph under one of the Hyksos kings, of his 
life at their court, of the reception of his father and 
brothers in Egypt with all their belongings, is in 
complete accordance with the manners and customs, 
as also with the place and time. 

Joseph's Hyksos-Pharaoh reigned in Auaris, or 
Zoan, the later Ramses-town, and held his court in 
the Egyptian style, but without excluding the Se- 
mitic language. His pharaoh has proclaimed before 
him in Semitic language an Abrek, that is, ^ bow the 
knee,' a word which is still retained in the hiero- 
glyphic dictionary, and was adopted by the Egyptians 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 133 

to express their feeling of reverence at the sight of 
an important person or object. He bestows on him 
the high dignity of a Zaphnatpaneakh, 'governor 
of the Sethroitic nome."^ On the Egyptian origin 
of the offices of an Adon and Ab which Joseph 
attributes to himself before his family, I have al- 
ready made all the remarks that are necessary. 
The name of his wife Asnat is pure Egyptian and 
almost entirely confined to the old and middle em- 
pire. It is derived from the very common female 
name Sant, or Snat. The father of his wife, the 
priest of On-Heliopolis, is a pure Egyptian, whose 
name Potiphera meant in the native language 
Putiper'a (or pher'a), 'the gift of the sun.' The 
chamberlain who bought the boy Joseph from his 
brothers, and whose wife tempted the virtue of the 
young servant, was Putipher, a name which could 
not be pronounced in Egj^ptian otherwise than 
Putipar or (phar), 'the gift of the risen one.' His 
titles are given in Semitic language, although the 
word Saris, or chamberlain, is found written with 
Egyptian letters. 

* Pa'anekh, ' the place of life,' was the peculiar designation of 
the capital of this nome in the holy writing. The whole long word 
is to be analyzed into its component parts in the old Egyptian lan- 
guage. 

Za p- u nt p- a 'anekh. 

* Governor of the district of the place of life.* 



134 THE TRUE STORY OF 

We will not neglect at the mention of Putipliars 
wife to call attention to the passage of the Orbiney 
papyrus, which at the same time is calculated to cast a 
bad light on the wantonness of the Egyptian women, 
but which before all things stands in a particular 
relation to the history of Joseph. Anepu, a married 
man, sends his young brother, the unmarried hero 
of the story, from the field to the house to fetch seed 
corn. What occurred the following literal transla- 
tion sufficiently explains : — "- And he sent his little 
brother, and said to him, ' Hasten and bring us seed 
corn from the village.' And his little brother found 
the wife of his elder brother occupied in combing 
her hair. And he said to her ' Rise up, give me 
seed corn that I may return to the field, for thus has 
my elder brother enjoined me, to return without 
delaying.' The woman said to him, ' Go in, open 
the chest, that thou mayst take what thine heart 
desires, for otherwise my locks will fall to the 
ground.' And the youth went within into the 
stable, and took thereout a large vessel, for it was 
his will to carry out much seed corn. And he loaded 
himself with wheat and Durra corn, and went out 
with it. Then she said to him, ' How great is the 
burden in thine arms'? ' He said to her, ' Two 
measures of Durra and three measures of wheat 
make together five measures which rest on my 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 135 

arms.' Thus he spake to her. But she spake to 
the youth and said, ' How great is thy strength ! 
Well have I remarked thy power many a time.' 
And her heart knew him ! . . . and she stood up 
and laid hold of him, and she said to him, ' Come, 
let us celebrate an hour's repose. The most beauti- 
ful things shall be thy portion, for I will prepare 
for thee festal garments.' Then was the youth like 
to the panther of the south for rage, on account of 
the evil word which she had spoken to him. But 
she was afraid beyond all measure. And he spoke 
to her and said, ' Thou, O woman, hast been like a 
mother to me, and thy husband like a father, for he 
is older than I, so that he might have been my 
begetter. Why this great sin that thou hast spoken 
to me ? Say it not to me another time, then will 
I this time not tell it, and no word of it shall come 
out of my mouth to any man at all.' And he loaded 
himself with his burden and went out into the field. 
And he went to his elder brother, and they com- 
pleted their day's work. And when it was evening 
the elder brother returned home to his habitation. 
And his little brother followed behind his oxen, 
which he had laden with all the good things of 
the field, to prepare for them their place in the 
stable in the village. And behold the wife of his 
elder brother feared because of the word which she 



136 THE TRUE STORY OF 

had spoken, and she took a jar of fat, and she was 
like one to whom an evil-doer had offered violence, 
since she wished to say to her husband, ' Thy little 
brother has offered me violence.' And her husband 
returned home at evening, according to his daily 
custom, and found his wife lying stretched out and 
suffering from injury. She gave him no water for 
his hands according to her custom. And the can- 
dles were not lighted, so that the house was in dark- 
ness. But she lay there. And her husband spoke 
to her thus, ' Who has had to do with thee ? Lift 
thyself up ! ' She said to him, ' No one has had to 
do with me except thy little brother, since when he 
came to take seed corn for thee, he found me sitting 
alone, and said to me, " Come, let us make merry 
an hoar and repose ! Let down thy hair ! " Thus 
he spake to me, but I did not listen to him (but 
said). See ! am I not thy mother, and is not thy 
elder brother like a father to thee ? Thus spoke I 
to him, but he did not hearken to my speech, and 
used force with me, that I might not tell thee. 
Now if thou allowest him to live, I will kill my- 
self.' " 

We will break off at this place the thread of the 
narrative in which the simple mode of speech and 
exposition corresponds in the most striking manner 
with the style of the Bible. What we want to point 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. I37 

out, the reader of the foregoing sentences will im- 
mediately perceive. Potiphar's wife and Anepu's 
wife precisely resemble one another, and Joseph's 
and Bata's resistance and virtue appear so closely 
allied that one is almost inclined to assign a com- 
mon origin to both traditions. In any case the pas- 
sage we have just quoted from the Egyptian poem 
of the two brothers is a most precious and important 
elucidation of the history of Joseph in Egypt. 

That Joseph was in fact clothed with the highest 
rank at court next to his king is evident from the 
office he filled of an Adon ' over all Egypt ; ' (com-, 
pare Genesis xlv. 9.) On the monuments Adon 
answers to the Greek Epistates, an overseer, one 
set over others. The rank varied according to the 
business each had to perform. We find an Adon of 
the Amon town Diospolis, of the seat of justice, of 
the infantry, of the royal harem, of the treasurj^, of 
the workshops of pharaoh, of the beer-cellars, &c. 
The office of Joseph was quite different as an 'Adon 
over the whole land,' which I have only once again 
found in an old Egyptian inscription. Before king 
Horemheb of the eighteenth dynasty (the Horus of 
Manetho) ascended the throne, according to the 
account of a monument preserved at Turin, he was 
clothed with several very high offices, which brought 
him near to the person of the king. Finallj'- the 



138 THE TRUE STORY OF 

pharaoh was so pleased with his good services that 
he named him Ro-hir, that is Epitropos, or Procu- 
rator of the whole land. In this capacity, without 
having any one to share his authority with him, he 
was called to be 'the great lord in the king's house,' 
and ' he gave answer to the king and pleased him 
with the utterances of his mouth.' In such a ser- 
vice was Horemheb ' an Adon of the whole land for 
the duration of many years,' until he rose to the 
position of ' heir of the throne of the whole land,' 
and finally placed the royal crown on his head. 
We see from this that an ' Adon of the whole land ' 
was so important a position that Joseph, in fact, 
deserved the appellation of a Moshel, or Shallith, 
that is, a Prince or Regent over the whole land, as 
Luther translated the Hebrew word. With these 
remarks on Joseph, we will conclude this portion of 
the history of the middle empire. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 139 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY. — THUTMES III. 

Keeping in view our main purpose, of dwelling 
chiefly upon such portions of Egyptian history as 
concern more nearly the biblical narrative, a large 
space has been given to the Hyksos and to the 
relations with Semitic tribes. We have now come 
to the eighteenth dynasty, which succeeded the 
foreign domination. Aahmes, the conqueror, was 
the first, and after him came several illustrious 
kings, each one bearing the name of Thutmes or 
Amenhotep. In many respects this is the most in- 
teresting period in the long annals. Thutmes III., 
perhaps the greatest of all the pharaohs, reigned 
fiftj^-three years, and was justly renowned through- 
out all the known world. He is the Alexander the 
Great of Egyptian history. He carried on no less 
than thirteen campaigns in foreign countries, and 
made the power of Egypt felt in the heart of Africa, 
as well as of Asia. Countless memorials of his reign 
exist in papyri, on temple walls, in tombs, and even 
upon scarabaei and other ornaments. 



140 THE TRUE STORY OF 

In still clear characters may be read most of the 
accounts of these wars, the numbers of troops that 
were engaged, the numbers killed and taken prison- 
ers, and all the details of the vast booty brought 
into Egypt. When so many periods are in utter 
darkness, it is wonderful that such full records exist 
of this great reign. The statistician can easily form 
an idea of the civilization of the age by observing 
the quantity and character of the spoil and of the 
tributes afterwards imposed upon the conquered 
nations. Both the quantity and the character of the 
merchandise fill the mind of the modern reader with 
wonder. Meanwhile the monarch constructed new 
temples at Thebes and enlarged the old ones, and 
everywhere his triumphs were blazoned. The Ro- 
man emperor Germanicus, as Tacitus has recorded, 
saw these temples and their inscriptions when their 
glory had not been so far obscured. 

Among the records of that day were catalogues 
of the towns and cities in Syria that had submitted 
to the Egyptian arms. One of these catalogues is 
filled with Semitic names. 

What gives the highest value to the catalogue is 
the undisputed fact that more than three hundred 
years before the entrance of the Jews into the land 
of Canaan, a great league of peoples of the same 
race, which ^the monuments call by the name of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 141 

Ruthen, existed in Palestine under little kings, who 
dwelt in the same towns and fortresses as we find 
stated on the monuments, and who for the greater 
part by conquest fell into the hands of the Jewish 
immigrants. Among these the king of Kadesh, on 
the Orontes, in the land of the Amorites — as the 
inscriptions expressly state — played the first part, 
since there obeyed him, as their chief leader, all the 
kings and their peoples from the water of Egypt 
(which is the same as the biblical brook, which 
flowed as the boundary of Egypt) to the rivers of 
Naharain, afterwards called Mesopotamia. To these 
had joined themselves the Phoenician Khalu, who 
dwelt in the country on the sea-coast called Zahi by 
the Egyptians, and whose capital was Aradus, as 
also the Kiti (the Chittim of Holy Scripture), who 
possessed the island of Cyprus, and in all proba- 
bility the sea-coast lying to the north of the Phoeni- 
cians. The triangle between the points Kadesh, 
Semyra, and Aradus, represented the theatre of the 
hostile engagements which have been so often men- 
tioned. 

An unknown poet, out of the number of the 
holy fathers, felt himself inspired to sing in mea- 
sured words the glory of the king, and the might 
and grandeur of the god Amon. His song has out- 
lived the ravages of time and the enmity of man. 



142 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Having been well concealed, the tall granite tablet 
adorns at this day the rooms of the Egyptian Mu- 
seum at Boolaq. As Moses, after the overthrow of 
pharaoh and his host in the Reedy Sea, sang a fer- 
vent hymn of praise to exalt the wondrous might 
and strength of the eternal God, so, three hundred 
years before the wise legislator of the Jewish peo- 
ple, the nameless seer of Amon praised, after his 
own fashion, his god and his king. Thus run his 
words : — 

1. "Come to me," said Amon, " and enjoj" yourself, and 

admire my excellences. 
Thou, my son, 'who honorest me, Thutmes the 3d, 

ever living. 
I shine in the light of the morning sun through thy 

love. 

2. And my heart is enraptured, if thou directest thy 

noble step to my Temple. 
I stand upright there 

3. In my dwelling. 

Therefore will I mark thee out as wonderful. I give 

thee power and victory over all lands. 
All people shall feel a terror before thy soul. 
And shall fear thee to the utmost ends of the world, 
to the 

4. four props of Heaven. 

I let thy strength grow great in all bodies. 

I let thy war-cry resound in all the lands of foreigr 

peoples. 
Let the kings of the world be all at once in th^ 

grasp. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 143 

5. I stretch out my own han&s. 

I bind thee with bands, and enclose for thee the 
wandering Nubians to ten thousands and thou- 
sands. 

Those who inhabit the north, let them be taken 
prisoners by hundreds of thousands. 

6. I place thy gainsay ers under thy feet. 
Strike the host of thine enemies. 

Also I give thee the earth, in its length and in its 

breadth. 
-Let the inhabitants of the west and of the east be 
thy subjects. 

7. Pass through with jo^^ful heart the lands which none 

have trodden till thy time. 
I will be thy leader ; reach them ; 
pass through the great ring of water 

8. In the land of Naharain, in full victorious power. 
It is my will that the peoples hear thy war-cry, 

which penetrates to their caverns. 
I have taken away from their nostrils the breath of 
life. 

9. I make thy manly courage penetrate even to their 

hearts. 
My crown on thy head is a consuming fire ; 
It goes forth and conquers the false brood of the 

Kittim. 

10. By the sparkle of its flames the lords among them 

are turned to ashes. 
It cuts oflT the heads of the 'Aamu ; they cannot 

escape ; 
It strikes to the ground whoever turns himself round 

before its strength. 

11. I make thy victories to go on through all nations ; 



144 THE TRUE STORY OF 

My ro3'al serpent shines on thy forehead, 

And th}^ enem}^ is reduced to nothing as far as the 

horizon. 
They come and bring the tribute on their shoulders, 
And bow themselves 

12. Before thy Holiness ; for such is my will. 

I make the rebellious ones fall down exhausted near 

thee, 
A burning fire in their hearts, and in their limbs a 

trembling. 

13. I came, and thou smotest the princes of Zahi. 

I scatter them under thy feet over all their lands. 
I make them behold thy Holiness like the beaming 

(sun). 
Thou shinest in sight of them in my form. 

14. I came, and thou smotest those who dwell in Asia. 
Thou madest prisoners the goatherds of Ruthen. 

I make them behold thy Holiness in the adornment 

of thy royal dignity. 
As thou graspest the weapons on the war-chariots. 

15. I came, and thou smotest the land of the East, 
Thou camest to those who dwell in the territories of 

the Holy Land. 
I make them behold thy Holiness like the star Ca- 

nopus. 
Which pours his light in a glance of fire 
When he disperses the morning dew. 

16. I came, and thou smotest the land of the West, 
Kefa (Phoenicia) and Asebi (C3^prus) fear thee. 

I make them behold thy Holiness like a 3'oung bull. 
Full of courage, when he whets his horns, he is un- 
approachable. 

17. I came, and thou smotest the subjects of their lords ; 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 145 

The land of Mathen trembles for fear of tnee. 
I make them behold thy Holiness like a crocodile, 
The terrible one in the water ; he is not to be en- 
countered. 

18. I came, and thou smotest the islanders in the middle 

of the great sea ; 
Thy war-cr}^ is over them. 

I make them behold thy Holiness as the avenger, 
Who appears on the back of his sacrifice. 

19. I came, and thou smotest the land of the Thuhen ; 
The people of Uthent is in thy power. 

I make them behold thy Holiness as a lion, with a 

fierce eye, 
Who leaves his den and stalks through the valleys. 

20. I came, and thou smotest the hinder lands. 

The circuit of the Great Sea is bound in thy grasp. 
I make them behold thy Holiness like the hovering 

sparrow-hawk. 
Which seizes with his glance whatever pleases him. 

21. I came, and thou smotest the lands in front ; 
Those who sit upon the sand thou hast made pris- 
oners alive. 

I make them behold thy Holiness like the jackal of 

the south ; 
A concealed wanderer he passes through the land. 

22. I came, and thou smotest the nomad tribes of Nubia, 
Even to the land of Shat, which is in thy grasp. 

I make them behold thy Holiness like thy pair of 

brothers. 
Whose hands I have united to bless thee. 

23. As for th}' pair of sisters, I make them shed on thee 

good fortune and prosperity. 
My hands in the height of heaven ward oflf misfortune ; 
10 



146 ^^^ TRUE STORY OF 

I protect thee, my beloved son, 

The powerful bull, who didst stand up as king in 

Thebes, 
Whom I have begotten out of [my loins], 

24. Thutmes, w^ho lives for evermore,. 
Who has shown all love to my Being. 

Thou hast raised m^^ dwelling in long-lasting works. 
More extensive and broader than they have ever been. 
A great gate [protects against the entrance of the 
impious] . 

25. Thou hast established joj^ful feasts in favor of Amon. 
Greater are thy monuments than those of all former 

kings. 

I gave thee the order to execute them, 

And thou hast understood it. 

Therefore I place thee on the chair of Hor for never- 
ending many years. 

Conduct and guide the living generations ! " 

The foregoing song of victory of the unknown 
Theban poet, the similar songs of victory in honor 
of the kings Ramses II. and III., the heroic song of 
the poet Pentaur on the great deeds of king Ramses 
II. during his campaign against the king of Kadesh 
and his allies, will remain for all times unequalled 
specimens of the old Egj'ptian language at its high- 
est epoch. 

The victories of the heroic king Thutmes III., 
who during his numerous campaigns brought the 
lands and cities of western Asia into his power, to 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 147 

whom Libya and the peoples of Nubia and Ethi- 
opia, as far as the promontory now called Gardafui 
opposite the south coast of Arabia, were subject, — 
had brought to Egypt unnumbered prisoners of 
every race, who, according to the old custom, found 
their fit occupation in the public works. It was 
principally to the great public edifices, and among 
these especially to the enlarged buildings of the 
temple of Amon, at Ape (near Karnak), that the 
foreigners were forced to devote all their labor, 
under the superintendence of the Egyptian archi- 
tects (Mer) and overseers (Rois), who had on their 
part to carry out the orders and directions of the 
royal head architect. In those days a certain Puam 
was clothed wiih this high office at the court of 
pharaoh ; his name is of Semitic origin, meaning 
' one who has the mouth full of dinner.' The pris- 
oners were obliged, in a manner answering to their 
condition, to undergo the severest labors at the 
buildings. To these belonged especially the bak- 
ing of the bricks, as it is portrayed in so clear 
and lively a manner in the Book of Books in the 
description of the oppression of the children of 
Israel in Egypt. 

Fate, has preserved to us on the walls of a cham- 
ber in a tomb in the interior of the hill of Abd-el- 
Qurnah, in the region of the melancholy ' coffin-hill' 



148 THE TRUE STORY OF 

(Du-neb-ankh), a very instructive pictorial repre- 
sentation, in which the pencil of the deceased mas- 
ter has portrayed in lively colors to fature gen- 
erations the industry of the prisoners. Far more 
convincing than the explanations, written by the 
side in old Egyptian letters and words, these curi- 
ous drawings themselves allow us to recognize to 
their full extent the fate and the severe labor of the 
unfortunate prisoners. Some carry water in jugs 
from the tank hard by ; others knead and cut up the 
loamy earth ; others again, by the help of a wooden 
form, make the bricks, or place them carefully in 
long rows to dry ; wliile the more intelligent among 
them carrj^ out the work of building the walls. The 
words which are added as explanations of each occu- 
pation give us the authentic information that the 
laborers are captive people which Thutmes III. has 
carried away to build the temple of his father Amon. 
They explain that the 'baking of the bricks' is a 
work for the new building of the provision-house of 
the god Amon, of Apet (the east side of Thebes), 
and they finally declare, in a copious manner, the 
strict superintendence of the steward over the for- 
eigners in the following words : " (Here are seen) 
the prisoners which have been carried away as liv- 
ing prisoners in very great numbers ; they work at 
the building with active fingers ; their overseers 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 149 

show themselves in sight; these insist with vehe- 
mence, obeying the orders of the great skilled Lord 
(who prescribes to them) the works, and gives direc- 
tions to the masters ; (they are rewarded) with wine 
and all kinds of good dishes ; they perform their 
service with a mind full of love for the king ; they 
build for Thutmes III. a Holy of Holies for (the 
gods), may it be rewarded to him through a range 
of many years." 

The overseer (Rois) speaks thus to the laborers 
pt the building : ' The stick is in my hand, be not 
idle.' 

The picture and the words, which we have laid 
before our readers exactly as they have been trans- 
mitted to us, present an important illustration of 
the accounts in the Bible concerning the hard bond- 
age of the Jews in Egypt. We also there read, ' And 
they set overseers over them, who oppressed them 
with hard servitude, for they built for pharaoh the 
towns of Pithom and Raamses as treasure-cities.' 
'And they made their life hard to them with severe 
work in clay and brick.' 'And the overseers urged 
them and said. Fulfil your day's work.' 

The severe and continuous labor so represented 
was bestowed upon the various great temples at 
Thebes ; among them was the Sekhem, or Holy of 
Holies of the god Amon, and the stupendous Hall 



150 THE TRUE STORY OF 

of Pillars, called Khu-mennu, or ' splendid memo- 
rial,' which was dedicated not only to the god Amon, 
but also to the deified rulers, whom Thutmes III. 
acknowledged as his legitimate predecessors on the 
throne, and as the ancestors of his own house. 
Here, in one of the chambers situated towards the 
south, was found that celebrated wall of the kings 
which is known to science under the designation of 
the Table of Kings of Karnak. In this the pharaoh 
traces back his pedigree to his great ancestor Se- 
noferu, of the third dynasty (of Memphis), and 
reckons the kings Assa, Pepi, the petty kings of the 
name of Antef, the famous sovereigns of the twelfth 
dynasty, and some thirty princes of the thirteenth, 
as his ancestors. 

The great southern propylsea of the temple have 
suffered much from the corrodiug tooth of time and 
the destroying hand of man. But even the remains 
which have survived, a heap of lonely ruins, enable 
us to judge of the high perfection of the artistic 
powers, which created such almost unrivalled master- 
works, and were able, by means to us inexplicable, 
to overcome the resistance of the hardest stone. 
Whether we suffer our attention to dwell on the 
way in which these great masses of stone have been 
brought together and united in a complete structure 
perfectly well arranged and producing the effect of 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 151 

symmetry alike in the whole and in the several 
parts ; whether we feast our sight upon the marvel- 
lous ornamental work in stone, by means of which 
the artist's hand had the skill to delight us with a 
welcome interruption of the great plain surfaces; 
whether we gaze with astonished eyes upon the 
indescribable dignity and the kingly mien of the 
remaining statues of standing or sitting pharaohs 
and deities ; whether, in fine, we admire the sharp 
cutting and the dexterity, never after attained, in 
the drawing of the hieroglyphics, which in long 
lines and columns cover walls, pillars, and sculp- 
tures, rather as ornaments than inscriptions : wher- 
ever we turn, there presents itself to us — the late 
heirs to that long-buried world of old — that six- 
teenth century before our era, the age of the 
Thutmes and their immediate successors, as the 
most perfect acme of the old Egyptian art, as grand 
in its conception of the whole, as it was full of taste 
and refinement in the execution of the several parts. 
Dr. Brugsch devotes a large space to the various 
edifices, obelisks, and statues which have been iden- 
tified by himself and others as the work of this great 
king, and which show that his care was co-exten- 
sive with his dominion. In Nubia and in the island 
of Elephantine, in ancient Memphis, in various cities 
in the north, and even in far Mesopotamia, the evi- 
dences of his power have been found. 



152 THE TRUE STORY OF 

We will here bid farewell to the greatest king of 
Egyptian history ; the victorious conqueror and 
ruler of a whole world, from the southernmost 
lands of inner Africa to the columns of heaven in 
the land of Naharain ; to the founder of a multitude 
of new temples, to the upholder of the temples of 
his forefathers, to the celebrated benefactor of the 
servants of the gods, to whom, during a long exist- 
ence, it was granted by the divine ones to see per- 
petuated on their temple walls the deeds of his 
arm and the achievements of his genius. What 
wonder then that his contemporaries already wor- 
shipped him while alive as a divine being, and 
allotted to him after his death the honors of an 
inhabitant of heaven ? His name was inscribed on 
thousands of little images, and small stone scarabsei, 
which were used for rings ; he was considered as 
the luck-bringing god of the country, and a pre- 
server against the evil influence of wicked spirits 
and magicians. 

Thus the memory of the king has lasted to our 
days ; and it is not by accident that even the sons 
of Europe and America, whom a love of knowledge 
and curiosity, or the mild air of the Egyptian heaven, 
leads to the blessed shores of the Nile, of all the 
pharaohs, first learn the name of Ra-men-kheper, 
which Thutmes III. bore in his cartouche. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 153 



CHAPTER IX. 

AMEXHOTEP III., AND KHUNATEN, THE HEEETIC. 

The great Thutmes was succeeded by Amenho- 
tep II., and by Thutmes IV., both vigorous and 
renowned kings. The next in the line, however, 
Amenhotep III., was far more illustrious. There 
exists a famous memorial of this monarch in the 
form of a pair of immense statues in sitting post- 
ure, of which, fortunately, there is an authentic 
account written by the sculptor himself. His name, 
like that of the king, was Amenhotep. 

"My lord promoted me to be the chief architect. I 
immortaUzed the name of the king, and no one has done 
the like of me in m}' works, reckoning from earl}^ times. 
For him was created the sand- stone hill ; he is indeed the 
heir of the god Toom. I acted according to what seemed 
best in my estimation, inasmuch as I executed two por- 
trait-statues of noble hard stone in this his o-reat buiklino;. 
It equals heaven. No king has done the like since the 
time of the reign of the Sun-god Ra, who possessed the 
land. Thus I executed these works of art, his statues — 
(they were astonishing for their breadth, and height in a 



154 'mE TRUE STORY OF 

perpendicular direction : their completed form made the 
propylon look small; 40 cubits was their measure) — in 
the splendid sand-stone mountain,* on its two sides, 
that of Ra and that of Toom (that is, the east and west 
sides). 

" I caused to be built eight ships ; they (the statues) 
were carried up (the river) and placed in their sublime 
building. They will last as long as heaven. 

" I declare to you who shall come here after us, that 
of the people who were assembled for the building, every 
one was under me. They were full of ardor ; their heart 
was moved with joy ; they raised a shout and praised the 
gracious god. Their landing in Thebes was a joyful event. 
The monuments were raised in their future place." 

We must not fail here to remark to our readers, 
that the statues of the king, of forty cubits high 
(that is, twenty-one metres, or nearly seventy Eng- 
lish feet), mentioned in the inscription, are the two 
celebrated statues of Memnon, about v^hich we shall 
speak presently. The measure assigned to them an- 
swers to the modern measurements,! and so does the 

* Perhaps the quarries of Silsihs are here meant, which in fact 
lie on the east and west sides of the river, and the inscriptions of 
which refer to these works. 

t According to actual measurement, the height of the sitting fig- 
ures, from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet, is 14-28 
metres, not counting the destroyed head-dress. The footstool has 
a height of 4*25 metres. The whole height of the statues, with 
the foundation, is 18*53 metres. According to the above inscrip- 
tion, which gives the whole a height of 21 metres, the head-dress 
must be reckoned at 2*47 metres, which answers exactly to the 
height of a so-called pshent-crown. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 155 

description of their size, which must have made the 
tower gateway (propylon) which stood behind them 
look small. Thus, thanks to a peculiar ordering of 
destiny, which has preserved to us his own statues, 
we now know the noble lord and master who con- 
ceived the plan of this double gigantic work, the 
size and extent of which has excited the greatest 
astonishment and unqualified admiration of the an- 
cients as well as the moderns. It was the head 
architect, Amenhotep, the 'son of Hapoo, who had 
the skill to create them in the sandstone quarries of 
Silsilis, besides building the temple. 

On the further bank of the river, in a north- 
easterly direction from the temple of Thutmes III., 
in Medinet Abu, a new temple to the god Amon 
was raised by the king's command. Its site is indi- 
cated from a great distance by the gigantic sitting 
statues of the king, the fame of which the ancients 
spread over the whole world, under the name of the 
Statues of Memnon. Although little more than the 
foundation-walls of the temple itself are left, yet a 
memorial tablet, which now lies thrown down on its 
back, bears witness to the size and importance of 
the original building. In the inscription which 
adorns its surface, there is described a dialogue be- 
tween the king and the god. First the king, Amen- 
hotep III., speaks thus : 



156 THE TRUE STORY OF 

'' Come then, Amon-Ea, lord of Thebes in Ape, behold 
th}^ dwelling, which is prepared for thee on the great place 
of Us (Thebes) ; thy glory resides in the w^estern part 
(of the cit}^) . Thou passest through the heaven to unite 
thj'self with her (the city), and thou risest on the circle 
of heaven (in the east) ; then is she enlightened by the 
golden beams of thy countenance. Her front turns to- 
wards the east, &c. 

" Thy glory dwells in her. I have not let her want for 
excellent works of lasting beautiful white stone. I have 
filled her with monuments in my (name), from the hill of 
the wonderful stones. Those who show them in their 
place are full of great joy on account of their size." 

The temple, now in ruins, was carried out accord- 
ing to the plan of the chief architect, the same who 
boasts of having designed the two gigantic statues 
of the king in front of it. 

These rise, at the present day, like two solitary 
watchers with the heaps of ruins at their backs, 
on the cultivated Theban plain, reached every year 
by the water of the inundation, which often mois- 
tens their rigid feet. 

The two statues — which represent king Amen- 
hotep in a sitting position, having at their feet small 
sitting statues of his wife Thi, and of his mother, 
Mut-em-ua — are carved each out of a single block 
of a firm red-brown sandstone, mixed with pieces 
of white quartz, and are in fact marvellous pro- 
ductions of treatment in the hardest and most 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 157 

brittle material. They stand at a distance of 
twenty-two feet from one another. The northern 
one is that which the Greeks and Romans cele- 
brated in poetry and prose by the name of the 
vocal statue of Memnon. Its legs are covered with 
the inscriptions of Greek, Roman, Phoenician, and 
Egyptian travellers, written to assure the reader 
that they had really visited the place, or had heard 
the musical tones of Memnon at the rising of the 
sun. 

In the year 27 B. c, in consequence of an earth- 
quake, the whole of the upper part of the statue 
was rem.oved from its place and thrown to the 
ground. From that time, the tourists of antiquity 
began to immortalize themselves by scratching their 
names, and adding befitting or unbefitting remarks. 
The assurances that they had heard Memnon sing, 
or rather ring (or tinkle), end under the reign of 
the emperor Septimius Severus, who completed the 
wanting upper part of the body as well as he could 
with blocks of stone piled up and fastened together. 
It is a well-known fact, of which that immortal 
master of science, Alexander von Humboldt, per- 
sonally assured me, that split or cracked rocks, or 
stone walls, after cooling during the night, at the 
rising of the sun, as soon as the stone becomes 
warmed, emit a prolonged ringing (or tinkling) 



158 THE TRVE STORY OF 

note. The sudden change from cold to heat cre- 
ates quick currents of air, which press through the 
crevices of the rock, and emit a peculiar melan- 
choly singing tone. When, in the year 1851, I 
chose as my dwelling for some months the temple 
of Ape, to the west of the temple of Khonsu at 
Karnak, I heard of a morning, after the sun had 
been some time up in the heaven, from a side cham- 
ber warmed by it, a melancholy note like that of 
the vocal Memnon. The fact was so well known 
to the Arabs who lived there, that they showed me 
this very chamber as that where the death-watch 
struck. After the statue of Memnon had been 
restored in the manner I have described, the sound 
naturally ceased of itself. The crack in the sand- 
stone was covered by the masonry which was built 
up over it. 

The historical legend of the vocal Memnon is 
thus a very modern story, about which the old 
Egyptians knew nothing. The song -of Memnon, 
however poetical it may have been in the fancy of 
antiquity, must be at once struck out of the history 
of Egypt. In its place the dry narrative of the 
Greek historian Pausanias resumes its full right, 
according to which the statue was that of a man of 
the country, by name Phamenoph, that is, ' Amen- 
hotep.' We know now who this Amenhotep was, — 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 159 

a king of that name, who, in spite of himself, was 
made the Memnon of the Greek fable. 

The architect Amenhotep, the son of Hapoo, 
who had the ability to execute so great a work, 
deserves so much the more the honor of having his 
name perpetuated, as he independently and with- 
out any order from the king, conceived so grand 
a plan and carried it out successfully. It was not 
only necessary to loosen the stone from the rocks 
and work it, but also to entrust the vast weight to 
the Nile, and to convey it from the Theban river- 
bank to its proper position. He was obliged, as 
he himself tells us, to build eight ships, in order to 
carry the burden of these gigantic statues. Even 
in our highly cultivated age, with all its inventions 
and machines, which enable us by the help of 
steam to raise and transport the heaviest weights, 
the shipment and erection of the statues of Mem- 
non remain to us an insoluble riddle. Verily Amen- 
hotep, the son of Hapoo, must have been not onlj^ 
a wise, but a specially ingenious man of his time. 

Amenhotep IV., who afterwards adopted the 
surname of Khu-n-aten, had a singular origin and 
histor3^ He stands alone, the solitary heretic king. 
According to the laws of descent, he was not in 
the direct line, because his father had by a mis- 
alliance passed over the hereditary princesses of 



160 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the royal race. The priests of Amon never recog- 
nized him as a lawful ruler, and their hostility to 
him was increased by his aversion to the worship 
of Amon, the greatly venerated god of Egypt. 

In the house of his mother Thi, the daughter 
of the foreigner, beloved by his father, hated by 
the priests, the young prince had willingly received 
the teaching about the one God of Light ; and 
what the mouth of his mother had impressed upon 
his childish mind in tender youth became a firm 
faith when he arrived at man's estate. The king 
was so little prepared to renounce the new doctrine, 
that he designated himself within the royal car- 
touche itself as 'a high-priest of Hormakhu,' and 
'a friend of the sun's disk,' Mi-aten. Such a 
heresy in the orthodox city of Amon, full of tem- 
ples, was at once deemed an unheard-of thing ; 
and open hate soon took the place of the aversion 
which had existed from the first. To the great 
misfortune of the king himself, his outward appear- 
ance betrayed, in a very unpleasing manner, his 
descent from his foreign mother. 

To fill up the measure of hatred against the caste 
of the priests of Amon, and to give it public ex- 
pression, the king issued a command to obliterate 
the names of Amon and of his wife Mut from the 
monuments of his royal ancestors. Hammer and 



TRE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 161 

chisel were put in active requisition on the en- 
graved stones, and the scribes of the royal court 
sought with care the places, even to the very names 
of his forefathers, in which the word Amon met 
the reader's eye. 

The discontent of the priests and the people had 
reached its highest point, and open rebellion broke 
out against the heretic king, who, ashamed of his 
honorable baptismal name of Amenhotep, had as- 
sumed the new name Khunaten, that is, 'splendor 
of the sun's disk,' by which we must hencefor- 
ward designate him. 

The king, under the conviction that he could not 
any longer remain in the city of Amon, determined 
to turn his back on the cradle of his ancestors, and 
to found a new capital, which he called Khu-aten, 
far from Memphis and Thebes, at a place in middle 
Egypt, which at this day bears the name of Tell- 
el-Amarna. 

Artists, overseers, and workmen were summoned 
with hot haste. According to the plans of the 
king, a splendid temple was erected in hard stone, 
in honor of the sun-god Aten, composed of many 
buildings, and with open courts, in which fire-altars 
were set up. The plan of the great building was 
new, with little of the Egyptian character, and 
arranged in a peculiar manner, 
11 



162 THE TRUE STORY OF 

As the chief official who was set over the king's 
house, there lived at the court of this pharaoh a 
certain Aahmes, who also had the superintendence 
of the provision-houses of the temple. Next to 
Meri-ra, he was one of the most zealous adherents 
of the new teaching. His prayer to the Sun, which 
is preserved to us among the sepulchral inscriptions 
at Tell-el-Amarna, will confirm this : 

'' Beautiful is thy setting, thou Sun's disk of life, thou 
lord of lords, and king of the worlds. When thou unitest 
thyself with the heaven at thy setting, mortals rejoice 
before thy countenance, and give honor to him who has 
created them, and pray before him who has formed them, 
before the glance of thy son, who loves thee, the King 
Khunaten. The whole land of Egypt and all peoples 
repeat all thy names at thy rising, to magnify thy rising 
in like manner as thy setting. Thou, O God, who in 
truth art the living one, standest before the two eyes. 
Thou art he which creates t what never was, which formest 
everything, which art in all things ; we also have come 
into being through the word of thy mouth. 

"Give me favor before the king forever; let there 
not be wanting to me a peaceful burial after attaining old 
age in the land of Khu-aten, when I shall have finished 
my course of life in a good state. 

' ' I am a servant of the divine benefactor (that is of 
the king) , I accompany him to all places where he loves 
to dwell. I am his companion at his feet. . For he raised 
me to greatness when I was yet a child, till [the day of 
my] honor in good fortune. The servant of the prince 
rejoices, and is in a festive disposition every day." 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 163 

In these and similar creations of a poetic form 
there reigns such a depth of view, and so devout a 
conception of God, that we are almost inclined to 
give our complete assent to the teaching, about 
which the king is wont to speak so fully and with 
so much pleasure. 

His royal spouse also, Nofer-i-Thi, was deeply 
penetrated with the exalted doctrines of the new 
faith, which to contemporaries appeared in the light 
of an open heresy against the mysterious traditions 
on the being of the godhead in the rolls of the holy 
books of the other temples of the land. 

According to the wall-pictures in two sepulchral 
chambers in the hills behind the town, the pharaoh 
Khunaten enjoyed a very happy family life. Sur- 
rounded by his daughters and wife, who often, from 
a high balcony, threw down all kinds of presents to 
the crowd which stood below, the mother holding 
on her lap the little Ankh-nes-aten, — he reached 
a state of the highest enjoyment, and found in the 
love of his family, and the devout adoration of his 
god, indemnification for the loss of the attachment 
of the ' holy fathers ' and of a great part of the 
people. The widowed queen-mother Thi also shared 
this family happiness, and thus we find her sitting 
in peaceful intercourse with her son and his wife, in 
the hall of the royal palace. 



164 THE TRUE STORY OF 

King Khunaten gave remarkable expression to his 
love for his relations by three rock pictures, with 
inscriptions all to the same effect, which remain on 
the steep face of the rock near the city of Khu-aten, 
but are barely within reach of the eye. The king 
and queen are seen in the upper compartment, rais- 
ing their hands in an attitude of prayer to the god 
of light, whose disk rises over their heads in the 
full splendor of his beams, each ray of the sun 
terminating in a hand dispensing life. Two daugh- 
ters, Meri-aten and Mak-aten, accompany their royal 
parents. 

Here is one paragraph of the inscription : 

''Thereupon King Khunaten swore an oath to his 
father thus : Sweet love fills my heart for the queen, for 
her young children. Grant a great age to the Queen 
Nofri-Thi in long years ; may she keep the hand of Pha- 
raoh. Grant a great age to the royal daughter Meri- 
aten, and to the roj^al daughter Mak-aten, and to their 
children ; may they keep the hand of the queen, their 
mother, eternally and forever." 

This memorial, in the form of a rock tablet, re- 
mains to this day. 

King Khunaten died without male issue, — possi- 
bly by violence, — and his three sons-in-law in turn 
succeeded him upon the throne. But neither of 
them had the favor of the priests, and their hold 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 165 

upon the supreme power was short. A certain Ai, 
who had been master of the horse under king Khu- 
naten, seized upon the empire ; and, as he brought 
back the worship to the old temples and reinstated 
the old priests in power, he had a prosperous reign, 
and went through the usual campaigns against the 
neighbors of Egypt. During his reign all possible 
damage was inflicted upon the works of the i^ono- 
theist king Khunaten, with the intent to blot out 
his name from the earth. Ai was succeeded by 
Horemhib, or Horus, who had no shadow of title, 
except that his wife was sister to a former queen. 
His reign seems to have been more than ordinarily 
brilliant ; and full particulars of his coronation and 
memorials of his deeds are preserved in a papyrus 
preserved at Turin, of which Dr. Brugsch gives a 
full and stately translation. 

We give the concluding portion. The gods of 
Egypt are represented as having assembled to wel- 
come and to crown the new pharaoh : 

" Then came forth from the palace the holiness of 
this splendid god Amon, the king of the gods, with 
his son before him, and he embraced his pleasant 
form, which was crowned with the royal helmet, in 
order to deliver to him the golden protecting image 
of the sun's disk. The nine foreign nations were 
under his feet, the heaven was in festive disposi- 



IQQ THE TRUE STORY OF 

tion, the land was filled with ecstasy, and as for 
the divinities of Egypt, their souls were full of 
pleasant feelings. Then the inhabitants, in high 
delight, raised towards heaven the song of praise ; 
great and small lifted up their voices, and the whole 
land was moved with joy. 

'' After this festival in Ape of the southern coun- 
try was finished, then went Amon, the king of the 
gods, in peace to Thebes, and the king went down 
the river on board of his ship, like an image of 
Hormakhu. Thus had he taken possession of this 
land, as was the custom since the time of the sun- 
god Ra. He renewed the dwellings of the gods, 
from the shallows of the marsh-land of Nathu as 
far as Nubia. He had all their images sculptured, 
each as it had been before, more than . . . And the 
sun-god Ra rejoiced, when he beheld (that renew^ed) 
which in former times had been destroyed. He set 
them up in their temple, and he had a hundred 
images made, one for each of them, of like form, 
and of all kinds of costly stones. He visited the 
cities of the gods, which lay as heaps of rubbish in 
this land, and he had them restored just as they had 
been from the beginning of all things. He took 
care for their daily festival of sacrifice, and for all 
the vessels of their temples, formed out of gold and 
silver. He provided them (the temples) with holy 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 167 

persons and singers, and with the best of the body- 
guards ; and he presented to them arable land and 
cattle, and supplied them with all kinds of provi- 
sions which they required, to sing thus each new 
morning to the sun-god Ra : ' Thou hast made the 
kingdom great for us in thy son, who is the conso- 
lation of thy soul, king Horemhib. Grant him the 
continuance of the thirty years' feasts, give him the 
victory over all countries, as to Hor, the son of Isis, 
towards whom in like manner thy heart yearned in 
On,* in the company of thy circle of gods.' " 

* Heliopolis. 



168 THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PHARAOH OF THE OPPRESSION. 

The nineteenth dynasty began with Ramses I., 
a monarch of httle renown. He was succeeded by 
his son Mineptah I., Seti I., commonly known as 
Seti, a famous warrior, who pushed his armies in 
every direction and inflicted the severest punish- 
ment upon every nation that resistedo The weight 
of his wrath fell upon the unhappy Canaanites and 
the Shasu (ancestors of the modern Arabs). A 
contemporary record says : " His joy is to undertake 
the battle, and his delight is to dash into it. His 
heart is only satisfied at the sight of the stream of 
blood when he strikes off the heads of his enemies. 
A moment of the struggle of men is dearer to him 
than a day of pleasure. He slays them with one 
stroke, and spares none among them." 

He carried his victorious arms to Mount Lebanon, 
and when he returned to Egypt brought numbers 
of tall cedars for masts, and for flagstaffs to adorn 
Theban temples. 

The buildings erected in this reign, especially the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 169 

temples, are grand specimens of the art. These 
concessions to the priests, however, did not in their 
estimation counterbalance the injury done to the 
national religion by the king's worship of foreign 
deities. He was wholly devoted to the service of 
the Canaanitish god Baal (so often mentioned in 
Scripture), whose second name, Set, was reproduced 
in his own, Seti. 

When his son Ramses II. was twelve years old he 
was associated with his father in the government ; 
and his reign extended to not less than sixty-seven 
years, so that he was nearly eighty years of age at 
the time of his death. 

Ramses II. is sometimes called Ramses Miamun, 
and one of the royal prefixes is Soter-en-ra. 

This is the king who above all others bears the 
name of honor of A-nakhtu, ' the Conqueror,' and 
whom the monuments and the rolls of the books 
often designate by his popular names of Ses, Ses- 
tesu, Setesu, or Sestura, that is, the ^ Sethosis, who 
is also called Ramesses ' of the Manethonian record, 
and the renowned legendary conqueror Sesostris of 
the Greek historians. 

The number of his monuments, which still to the 
present day cover the soil of Egypt and Nubia in 
almost countless numbers, as the ruined remnants 
of a glorious past, or are daily brought to light from 



170 THE TRUE STORY OF 

their concealment, is so great and almost countless, 
that the historian of his life and deeds finds himself 
in a difficulty where to begin, how to spin together 
the principal threads, and where to end his work. 

The first care of Ramses after his father's death 
was to restore the dilapidated temples and public 
buildings, to set up statues, and to engrave last- 
ing memorials of his ancestors, not forgetting his 
own extraordinary merits. On the wall of a temple 
at Abydus is still to be seen an inscription, of which 
the translation occupies over eight closely printed 
octavo pages. This is wholly occupied with an 
account of the great works done by the king in the 
restoration of ancient edifices and in brightening 
the records of history. The style is ornate and at 
times poetical, full of figures and of bold apostro- 
phes, and at the same time wonderfully like that of 
the biblical writers. But Ramses appears to have 
been a boaster, and his real works are far inferior 
to those of his father, the ferocious Seti. 

It is scarcely worth while to relate what Ramses 
II. did for the buildings of his father at Abydus. 
In the course of his long reign the king completed 
the temple. When the great building was finished, 
he must have been advanced in years, since not less 
than sixty sons and fifty-nine daughters greeted in 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 171 

their pictures the entrance of the pilgrims at the 
principal gate. In proportion as the works executed 
under Seti, the father, present to the astonished 
eyes of the beholder splendid examples of Egyp- 
tian architecture and sculpture, just so poor and 
inferior are the buildings which were executed 
under the reign of Ramses, and which bear the 
names of the Conquering King. The feeling also 
of gratitude towards his parent seems to have grad- 
ually faded away with Ramses, as j^ears increased 
upon him, to such a degree, that he did not even 
deem it wrong to chisel out the names and memo- 
rials of his father in many places of the temple 
walls, and to substitute his own. 

Ramses II., like most of his predecessors, carried 
on foreign wars, especially against the Khita or 
inhabitants of Canaan. He obtained a doubtful 
victory over them at Kadesh ; and as he came out 
of the fight alone, and preserved his life by his per- 
sonal braverv, the event was celebrated in the most 
extravagant manner. The long and boastful ac- 
counts of this action and of the campaign were 
sculptured upon temple walls, and were illustrated 
by battle-scenes containing multitudes of figures, 
including, of course, the effigies of the conqueror 
himself. These vast pictured tablets are among the 
most valuable of historical monuments. The same 



172 THE TRUE STORY OF 

exploit was made the occasion of a long heroic 
poem, the earliest of war lyrics preserved to us. 

The temple-scribe, Penta-ur, a jovial companion, 
who, to the special disgust of his old teacher, mani- 
fested a decided inclination for wine, women, and 
song, had the honor, in the seventh year of Ramses 
II., to win the prize as the composer of an heroic 
song, a copy of which we not only possess in a 
roll of papyrus, but its words cover the whole sur- 
face of walls in the temples of Abydus,* Luqsor, 
Karnak, the Ramesseum at Ibsambool, in order to 
call the attention of the visitor, even at a distance, 
to the deeds of Ramses. 

The fact that it was engraved on the temple 
walls, and on the hard stone, may serve as a proof 
of the recognition which was accorded to the poet 
by the king and his contemporaries. And, indeed, 
even our own age will hardly refuse to applaud 
this work, although a translation cannot reach the 
power and beauty of the original. Throughout 
the poem the peculiar cast of thought of the Egyp- 
tian poet fourteen centuries before Christ continu- 
ally shines out in all its fulness, and confirms our 
opinion, that the Mosaic language exhibits to us an 
exact counterpart of the Egyptian mode of speech. 

* The parts of this temple which were dug out have been again 
carefully -covered up with sand. . 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 173 

The whole substance of thought of minds living at 
the same time, and in society with each other, must 
needs have tended towards the same conception 
and form, even though the idea which the one had 
of God was essentially different from the views of 
the other concerning the nature of the Creator of 
all things. 

From the poet we pass to the unknown painter 
and sculptor, who has chiselled in deep work on the 
stone of the same wall, with a bold execution of 
the several parts, the procession of the warriors, 
the battle before Kadesh, the storming of the for- 
tress, the overthrow of the enemy, and the camp 
life of the Egyptians. The whole conception must 
even at this day be acknowledged to be grand be- 
yond measure, for the representation sets before our 
eyes the deeds which were performed more vividly 
than any description in words and with the richest 
handling of the material, and displays the whole 
composition even to its smallest details. 

The poem of Penta-ur (Penta the Great) is doubt- 
less full of fire, and is a priceless relic ; but it is 
too long for the limits of this work, and no satis- 
factory abridgment could be made of it. The song 
of triumph attributed to Moses in the book of Exo- 
dus came a generation later. 

After a long war, a peace was made at the city of 



174 ^HE TRUE STORY OF 

Ramses,* between the two most powerful nations of 
the world at that time, Khita in the east, and Kemi 
in the west. It was to be hoped that the new offen- 
sive and defensive alliance, which united the princes 
and countries in the manner thus described, would 
attain its end, and bridle the fermenting restless 
world of the people of the Canaanites, which lay 
between them, and keep down every rising and 
movement of the hostilely disposed Semites, and 
confine them within the limits once for ail fixed. 
For that a ferment existed, even in the inmost heart 
of the Egyptian land, is sufficiently proved by the 
allusion in the treaty to the evasions of evil-disposed 
subjects. We may perhaps read between the lines 
that the Jewish people are meant, who, since their 
migration into the land of Egypt, had increased 
beyond measure, and without doubt were already 
making preparations to withdraw themselves from 
the power of their oppressors on the banks of the 
Nile. But how ? and when ? — this was hidden in 
the councils of the Eternal. 

Although Ramses raised his monuments in Thebes, 
and went up to the old capital of the empire to cele- 

* The ancient name of the city was Zoan, often written Zoan- 
Tanis, because situate in the Tanitic nome. When Ramses II. 
made it the royal residence it was called Pi-Ramses (city of Ram- 
ses), or sometimes Zoan-Ramses. It is called in the book of 
Exodus Raamses. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 175 

brate the festival of Amon ; although he held public 
courts in Memphis, to take counsel about the gold- 
fields in the Nubian country ; although he visited 
Abydus, to see the tombs of the kings and the 
temple of the dead built by his father ; — not to 
mention Heliopolis, in which he dedicated a temple 
and obelisks to the sun-god; — yet neither these nor 
other cities formed his permanent abode. On the 
eastern frontier of Egypt, in the lowlands of the 
Delta, in Zoan-Tanis, was the proper royal residence 
of the pharaoh. 

We have often mentioned this city, and have come 
to understand its important position. Connected 
with the sea, being situated on the then broad and 
navigable Tanitic arm of the Nile, it commanded 
also the entrance of the great road, covered by 
' Khetams,' or fortresses, which led to Palestine 
either in a north-easterly direction through Pelu- 
sium, or in an easterly direction through Migdol, on 
the royal road. Zoan-Tanis was, in the proper sense 
of the word, the key of Egypt. Impressed with the 
importance of the position of this ' great city,' Ra- 
messu transferred his court to Zoan, strengthened 
its fortifications, and founded a new temple-city. 

The hieratic rolls of papyrus, which have outlived 
the ravages of time, with one voice designate the 
newly founded temple-city (for the kings of the 



176 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

eighteenth dynasty had quite abandoned the old 
Zoan) as the central point of the court history of 
Egypt. Here resided the scribes, who in their let- 
ters have left behind for us the manifold informa- 
tion which the life at the court, the ordinances of 
the king and of the chief officials, and their rela- 
tions with their families in the most distant parts 
of the country, required them to give without 
reserve. Zoan, or, as the place is henceforth 
called, Pi-Ramessu, ' the city of Ramses,' became 
henceforward the especial capital of the empire. 

It will be useful to the reader to hear in what man- 
ner an Egyptian letter-writer described the impor- 
tance of this town on the occasion of his visit to it : 

'' So I arrived in the city of Ramses-Miamun, and I 
have found it excellent, for nothing can compare with 
it on the Theban land and soil. (Here is the seat) of the 
court. It is pleasant to live in. Its fields are full of 
good things, and life passes in constant plenty and abun- 
dance. Its canals are rich in fish, its lakes swarm with 
birds, its meadows are green with vegetables, there is no 
end of the lentils ; melons with a taste like honey grow in 
the irrigated fields. Its barns are full of wheat and durra, 
and reach as high as heaven. Onions and sesame are in 
the enclosures, and the apple-tree blooms. (?) The vine, 
the almond-tree, and the fig-tree grow in the gardens. 
Sweet is their wine for the inhabitants of Kemi. The}^ 
mix it with honey. The red fish is in the lotus-canal, the 
Borian-fish in the ponds, many kinds of Bori-fish, besides 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 177 

carp and pike, in the canal of Pu-harotha ; fat fish and 
Khipti-pennu fish are in the pools of the inundation, tho 
Hauaz-fish in the full mouth of the Nile, near the ' city 
of the conqueror ' (Tanis) . The city-canal Pshenhor pro- 
duces salt, the lake region of Pahir natron. Their sea- 
ships enter the harbor, plenty and abundance is perpetual 
in it. He rejoices who has settled there. My information 
is no jest. The common people, as well as the higher 
classes, say, ' Come hither ! let us celebrate to him his 
heavenly and his earthl}^ feasts.' The inhabitants of the 
reedy lake (Thufi) arrived with lilies, those of Pshensor 
with pap3'rus flowers. Fruits from the nurseries, flowers 
from the gardens, birds from the ponds, are dedicated to 
him. Those who dwell near the sea came with fish, and 
the inhabitants of their lakes honored him. The youths 
of the ' Conqueror's city ' were perpetuallj' clad in festive 
attire. Fine oil was on their heads of fresh-curled hair. 
They stood at their doors, their hands laden with branches 
and flowers from Pahathor, and with garlands from Pahir, 
on the day of the entr}' of king Ramessu-Miamun, the god 
of war Monthu upon earth, in the early morning of the 
monthly feast of Kihith (that is, on the 1st of Khoiakh). 
All people were assembled, neighbor with neighbor, to 
bring forward their complaints. 

'•Delicious was the wine for the inhabitants of the 
' Conqueror's cit3^' Their cider was like . . . . , their 
sherbets were like almonds mixed with hone3\ There was 
beer from Kati (Galilee) in the harbor, wine in the gar- 
dens, fine oil at the lake Sagabi, garlands in the apple- 
orchards. The sweet song of women resounded to the 
tunes of Memphis. So the}' sat there with joj^ful heart, or 
walked about without ceasing. King Ramessu-Miamun, 
he was the god the^^ celebrated." 
12 



178 THE TRUE STORY OF 

In spite of the unexplained names of the fishes 
and plants, the scribe could hardly have given a 
clearer or livelier account of the impression made 
on his susceptible mind by the new city of Ramses 
in its festal garments on the day of the entry of 
pharaoh. We may suppose that many a Hebrew, 
perhaps Moses himself, jostled the Egyptian scribe 
in his wandering through the gaily dressed streets 
of the temple-city. 

And this city of Ramses is the very same which 
is named in Holj^ Scripture as one of the two places 
in which pharaoh had built for him ' arei miskenoth,' 
' treasure cities,' as the translators understand it.* 
It would be better, having regard to the actual 
Egyptian word ' mesket,' ^ meskenet,' 'temple, holy 
place' (as, for example, king Darius designates his 
temple erected in the great Oasis to the Theban 
Amon), to translate it- 'temple-cities.' The new 
pharaoh, ' who knew not Joseph,' f who adorned the 
city of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic nome, and 
the city of Pithom, the capital of what was after- 
wards the Sethroitic nome, with temple-cities, is no 
other, can he no other^ than Ramessu II., of whose 

* Exod. i. 13 : ^' And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, 
Pithom and Raamses." 

t Who did not recognize what Joseph had long before done for 
Egypt. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 179 

buildings at Zoan the monuments and the papyrus- 
rolls speak in complete agreement. And although, 
as it happens, Pitum is not named as a city in which 
Ramses erected new temples to the local divinities, 
the fact is all the more certain, that Zoan con- 
tained a new city of Ramses, the great temple- 
district of the newly founded sanctuaries of the 
above-named gods. Ramessu is the pharaoh of the 
oppression, and the father of that unnamed princess 
who found the child Moses exposed in the bul- 
rushes on the bank of the river. 

While the fact, that the pharaoh we have named 
was the founder of the city of Ramses, is so strongly 
demonstrated by the evidence of the Egyptian rec- 
ords both on stone and papyrus, that only want 
of intelligence and mental blindness can deny it, 
the inscriptions do not mention one syllable about 
the Israelites. We must suppose that the captives 
were included in the general name of foreigners, 
of whom the documents make such frequent men- 
tion. The hope, however, is not completely ex- 
cluded, that some hidden papyrus may still give 
us information about them, as unexpected as it 
would be welcome. 

We must again remark, and insist with strong 
emphasis on the fact, that from this time, and in 
the future history of the empire, the town of Zoan- 



180 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Tauis is of great importance. On the wide plains 
before Zoan, the hosts of the warriors were mus- 
tered to be exercised in the manoeuvres of battle ; 
here the chariots of war rolled by with their stamp- 
ing pairs of horses ; the sea-going ships and their 
crews came to land at the harbors on the broad 
river. From this place Thutmes III. had started 
in his war against western Asia ; it was to Tanis 
that Ramses II. had directed his return from 
Thebes ; here he had received the embassy of 
peace from the king of Khita ; and from hence, as 
we shall presently have to relate, Moses led the 
Hebrews out of the land of bondage to the land of 
promise, to give his people the milk and honey 
of the Holy Land, in exchange for the flesh-pots 
of Egypt. 

The influx of Semite-Asiatic hostages and prison- 
ers exercised a continually increasing influence on 
religion, manners, and language. The Egyptian lan- 
guage was enriched (we might almost say, for our 
profit) with foreign expressions, often indeed from 
mere whim, but more often for good reasons, in 
order properly to designate unknown objects by 
their native names. The letters and documents 
of the time of the Ramessids are full of Semitic 
words thus introduced, and in this respect they are 
scarcely less affected than the German language 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 181 

now, the strength and beauty of which are so much 
degraded by the borrowing of outlandish words. 

Ramses II. enjoyed a long reign. The monuments 
expressly testify to a rule of sixty-seven years, of 
which probably more than half must be assigned to 
his joint reign with his father. Great in war, and 
active in the works of peace, Ramses seems also to 
have enjoyed the richest blessings of heaven in his 
family life. The outer wall of the front of the tem- 
ple of Abydus gives us the pictures and the names 
(only partially preserved) of 119 children (59 sons 
and 60 daughters). 

The elder sons died during the long reign of their 
father. The fourteenth in the long list of children, 
by name Mineptah, ' the friend of Ptah,' was chosen 
by destiny to mount at last the throne of the pha- 
raohs. He had already taken part in the affairs of 
government during the lifetime of his aged father, 
and in this capacity he appears on the monuments 
of Ramses II., by the side of his royal parent. 

Of the daughters of the king, the monuments 
name, during the lifetime of the pharaoh, as real 
queens and wives of Egyptian kings (perhaps sub- 
kings or brothers), his favorite daughter, called by 
the Semitic name of Bint-antha, ' the daughter of 
Anaitis,' and Meri-amon, and Neb-taui. A much 
younger sister of the name of Meri (Dear) deserves 



182 THE TRUE STORY OF 

to be mentioned, since her name reminds us of the 
Princess Merris (also called Thermuthis), according 
to the Jewish tradition,* who found the child Moses 
on the bank of the stream, when she went to bathe. 
Is it by accident, or by divine providence, that in 
the reign of Ramses III., about one hundred years 
after the death of his ancestor, the great Sesostris, 
a place is mentioned in Middle Egypt, which bears 
the name of the great Jewish legislator ? It is 
called T-en-Moshe, ' the island of Moses,' or ' the 
river-bank of Moses.' It lay on the eastern side of 
the river, near the city of the heretic king Khu-n- 
aten.f The place still existed in the time of the 
Romans ; those who describe Egypt at that time 
designate it w^ith a mistaken apprehension of its 
true meaning, as Musai, or Mus8n, as if it had 
some connection with the Greek Muses. 



* Joseph. Antiq, ii. 9, § 35; Artapanus, ap, Euseb. PrcBp 
Evang. ix. 27. 
t See p. 161. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 183 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS AND A SUMMARY 
OF SUCCEEDING HISTORY. 

MiNEPTAH II. makes but an insignificant figure 
among the proud kings of Egypt, being neither 
renowned for arts nor arms, and being remembered 
as a weak, cowardly, and cruel ruler. He does not 
rank with those pharaohs who have transmitted 
their remembrance to posterity" by grand buildings 
and the construction of new temples, or by the 
enlargement of such as already existed. 

With the exception of small portions, hardly 
worthy of being named, the new pharaoh contented 
himself with the cheap glory of utilizing, or rather 
misusing, the monuments of his predecessors, as 
far back as the twelfth dynasty, and not excepting 
even the works of the Hyksos, as bearers of his 
royal shields ; for in the cartouches of former kings, 
whence he had chiselled out their names, he unscru- 
pulously inserted his own, without any respect for 
the judgment of posterity. The nomad tribes of the 
Edomite Shasu — who under Seti I. still regarded 
the eastern region of the Delta, up to the neighbor- 



184 THE TRUE STORY OF 

hood of Zoan, the city of Ramses, as their own pos- 
session, until they were driven out by that pharaoh 
over the eastern frontier — bestirred themselves 
anew under Mineptah, but now in a manner alike 
peaceful and loyal. As faithful subjects of pha- 
raoh, they asked for a passage through the border 
fortress of Khetam, in the land of Thuku (Sukoth), 
in order to find sustenance for themselves and their 
herds in the rich pasture lands of the lake district 
about the city of Pitom. 

On this subject an Egyptian official makes the 
following report : 

"Another matter for the satisfaction of my master's 
heart. We have carried into effect the passage of the 
tribes of the Shasu from the land of Aduma (Edom), 
through the fortress (Khetam) of Mineptah-Hotephima, 
which is situated in Thuku (Sukoth), to the lakes of 
the city Pit-um, of Mineptah-Hotephima, which are situ- 
ated in the land of Thuku, in order to feed themselves 
and to feed their herds on the possessions of pharaoh, 
who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples. In the 
year 8 . . . . Set, I caused them to be conducted, accord- 
ing the list of the .... for the .... of the other names 
of the days, on which the fortress (Khetam) of Minep- 
tah-Hotephima is opened for their passage." 

If Ramses-Sesostris, the builder of the temple- 
city of the same name in the territory of Zoan- 
Tanis, must be regarded beyond all doubt as the 
pharaoh under whom the Jewish legislator Moses 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 185 

first saw the light, so the chronological relations — 
having regard to the great age of the two contem- 
poraries, Ramses II. and Moses — demand that 
Mineptah should in all probability be acknowledged 
as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He also had his 
royal seat in the city of Ramses, and seems to have 
strengthened its fortifications. The Bible speaks 
of him only under the general name of Pharaoh, 
that is, under a true Egyptian title, which was 
becoming more and more frequent at the time now 
under our notice. Pib-'ao — ' great house, high 
gate' — is, according to the monuments, the desig- 
nation of the king of the land of Egj^pt for the 
time being. This does not of itself furnish a deci- 
sive argument. Only the incidental statement of 
the Psalmist, that Moses wrought his wonders in the 
field of Zoan,* carries us back again to those sover- 
eigns, Ramses II. and Mineptah, who were fond of 
holding their court in Zoan-Ramses. 

Some have very recently wished to recognize the 
Egyptian appellation of the Hebrews in the name of 
the so-called 'Aper, 'Apura, or 'Aperiu, the Ery- 
thraean people in the east of the nome of Heliopolis, 
in what is known as the 'red country' on the 'red 
mountain ' ; and hence they have drawn conclusions 
which — speaking modestly, according to our knowl- 
edge of the monuments — rest on a weak founda- 

* Psalm Ixxviii. 43. 



186 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

tion. According to the inscriptions, the name of 
this people appears in connection with the breeding 
of horses and the art of horsemanship. In an his- 
torical narrative of the time of Thutmes III. (unfor- 
tunately much obliterated), the 'Apura are named 
as horsemen, or knights (senen), who mount their 
horses at the king's command. In another docu- 
ment, of the time of Ramses III., long after the 
exodus of the Jews from Egypt, two thousand and 
eighty-three 'Aperiu are introduced, as settlers in 
Heliopolis, with the words, ' Knights, sons of the 
kings and noble lords (Marina) of the 'Aper, settled 
people, who dwell in this place.' Under Ramses IV. 
we again meet with 'Aper, eight hundred in num- 
ber, as inhabitants of foreign origin in the district of 
'Ani or 'Aini, on the western shore of the Red Sea, 
in the neighborhood of the modern Suez. 

These and similar data completely exclude all 
thought of the Hebrews, unless one is disposed 
to have recourse to suppositions and conjectures 
against the most explicit statements of the biblical 
records. On the other hand, the hope can scarcely 
be cherished that we shall ever find on the public 
monuments — rather let us say in some hidden roll 
of papyrus — the events, repeated in an Egyptian 
version, which relate to the exodus of the Jews 
and the destruction of pharaoh in the Red Sea. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 187 

For the record of these events was inseparably 
connected with the humiliating confession of a 
divine visitation, to which a patriotic writer at the 
court of pharaoh would hardly have brought his 
mind. 

Presupposing, then, that Mineptah is to be re- 
garded as the pharaoh of the Exodus, this ruler 
must have had to endure serious disturbances of all 
kinds during the time of his reign : — in the west the 
Libyans, in the east the Hebrews, and — let us at 
once add — in the south a spirit of rebellion, which 
declared itself by the insurrection of a rival king 
of the family of the great Ramses-Sesostris. The 
events, which form the lamentable close of his rule 
over Egypt are passed over by the monuments with 
perfect silence. The dumb tumulus covers the mis- 
fortune which was suffered. 

In casting a glance over the most eminent contem- 
poraries of this king, we are reminded especially of 
his viceroy in Egypt, the ' king's son of Kush,' 
named Mas, — the same who had been invested with 
this high office in the southern province under Ram- 
ses II. His memory has been perpetuated in a rock 
inscription at Assuan. We may further make men- 
tion — instructed by a record in the quarries of Sil- 
silis — of the noble Pinehas, an Egyptian namesake 
of the Hebrew Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, son of 



188 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Aaron. In conclusion, let us not forget the very- 
influential high-priest of Amon, Roi, or Loi, Lui 
(i. e. Levi), who under Mineptah held the command 
of the legion of Amon, administered the treasury 
of Amon, and, according to the custom of the time, 
was chief architect to pharaoh. To be sure, this 
must have been an easy office for him, since there 
was not much building, except perhaps the royal 
sepulchre, which the drowned pharaoh probably 
never entered. 

Having arrived at the time when the Hebrews 
began the conquest of Canaan, and were henceforth 
a separate nation, it will not be expected that from 
this point anything more than a brief summary of 
Egyptian affairs will be given. The twentieth dynasty 
begins with the reign of Ramses HI., and ends with 
that of Ramses XIII. Foreign war is the one un- 
varying subject that presents itself as we look over 
the accounts that have been preserved. Ramses 
III. appears to have conquered Cyprus, Cilicia, and 
parts of Asia Minor, and he erected in various parts 
of Egypt and in foreign countries a large number 
of memorial buildings ' in his name,' called Ra- 
messea. He is known as Rhampsinitus in the his- 
tory of Herodotus. The remaining princes of the 
dynasty require no special mention here. Their 
reigns were in no way remarkable ; and toward the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 189 

last the Theban priests had become so influential 
as to vie with the pharaoh in power. After the 
death of Ramses XIII. a priest named Hirhor as- 
cended the throne, being the first of the twenty- 
first dynasty. The descendants of the Ramessu 
were banished. 

Then came an Assyrian invasion under the mighty 
king Nimrod (Naromath), ostensibly to reinstate 
the Ramessids, but really to effect a conquest of 
Egypt. Nimrod died while in Egypt, and was 
buried at Abydus. His son Shashank (Shishak 
in the Bible), became king, and fixed his seat at 
Bubastus. Egypt was at this time virtually an 
Assyrian province. This portion of Egyptian his- 
tor}^ was first made known to the world through 
the discoveries of Dr. Brugsch. The evidence 
comes from inscriptions on a large granite block 
found at Abydus. The twenty-second dynasty be- 
gan with Shashank I. This monarch — the Shishak 
of the Bible, the Sesonchis of Manetho — has be- 
come a conspicuous person in the history of Egypt, 
iji connection with the records of the Jewish mon- 
archy, through his expedition against the kingdom 
of Judah. It is well known how Jeroboam, the 
servant of king Solomon, rebelled against the king 
his master. After the prophet Ahijah had publicly 
designated him beforehand, as the man best quali- 



190 THE TRUE STORY OF 

fied to be the future sovereign, Jeroboam was obliged 
to save himself from the anger and the snares of 
the king, and for this reason he fled to Egypt, to 
the court of Shashanq I.* Recalled after the death 
of Solomon, he returned to his home, to be elected 
king of Israel according to the word of the prophet, 
while the crown of Judah fell to Solomon's son, 
Rehoboam.f In the fifth year of this latter king's 
reign, and probably at the instigation of his former 
guest (Jeroboam), Shashanq made his expedition 
against the kingdom of Judah, which ended in the 
capture and pillaging of Jerusalem. J 

This attack of the Egyptian king on the king- 
dom of Judah and the levitical cities, which the 
Scripture relates fully and in all its details, has 
been also handed down to later ages in outline on 
a wall of the temple of Amon in the Theban Api. 
On the south external wall, behind the picture of 
the victories of king Ramessu 11. , to the east of the 
room called the Hall of the Bubastids, the spec- 
tator beholds the colossal image of the Egyptian 
sovereign dealing the heavy blows of his victorious 
club on the captive Jews. The names of the towns 
and districts, which Shashanq I. conquered in his 



* 1 Kings xi. 26-40. f 1 Kings xii. ; 2 Chron. ill. 

X 1 Kings xiv. 25-28 ; 2 Chron. xii. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 191 

expedition against Judah, are paraded in long rows, 
in their Egyptian forms of writing, and frequently 
with considerable repetitions, each name being en- 
closed in an embattled shield. 

• This succession of Assyrian kings continued, 
though with many vicissitudes, for many reigns. 
The twenty-third dynasty consisted of 'three kings, 
and the period was one of incessant struggle with 
Assyrians on the north and Ethiopians on the south. 
The twenty-fourth dynasty is unknown. The long 
commotions resulted in the establishment of the Ethi- 
opian kings upon the Egyptian throne. They were 
Ethiopian only in name, however, being descend- 
ants of priests and princes of the Egyptian race, 
who had taken refuge during the Assyrian domi- 
nation in the regions watered by the Upper Nile. 
The Assyrians still ruled by means of petty kings 
whom they supported in Lower Egypt, while the 
Ethiopians had sway in Thebes and the country 
above. Full accounts of this period of intestine 
commotion have been found in memorial stones at 
Mount Barkal. These relate principally to the ex- 
ploits of the kings Piankhi and Miamun Nut. 
It is needless for any but archseologists to attempt 
to follow the few and uncertain lights in this dark 
era. It is perhaps enough to add that after a long 
period of utter confusion, in which Egyptians, As- 



192 THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 

Syrians, and Ethiopians were constantly in arms, 
peace came to the distracted country under the 
benign rule of Psametik I., who was doubly fortu- 
nate in preserving his own northern realm and in 
wedding the heiress of the Ethiopian line, the great- 
grand-daughter of the king Piankhi and of the 
beautiful queen Ameniritis. 

The splendid alabaster statue of the queen-mother 
Ameniritis, which was found at Karnak, and now 
adorns the rooms of the Egyptian Museum at 
Boulaq, is in this point of view a most important 
and suggestive memorial of that age. Sweet peace 
seems to hover about her features : even the flower 
in her hand suggests her high mission as reconciler 
of the long feud. 

The name Psametik is also of Ethiopian origin, 
and signifies 'Son of the sun.' His seat was at 
Sair in the north. The dynasty so happily begun 
lasted one hundred and thirty-eight years, when 
Egypt was once more conquered, B. c. 627, by a 
Persian army under Cambyses. The rule of the 
Persians, under six or more kings, lasted one hun- 
dred and three years. 

From this epoch the monuments are conspicu- 
ously silent. There are only isolated inscriptions, 
containing no records of the victories of each age, 
but continual songs of woe, which we must read 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 193 

between the lines. They form the dying swan- 
song of the mighty empire on the Nile. 

It is no longer the everlasting stone or monument 
that makes known to us the unenviable fortune of 
the land ; but it is the inquisitive Greek, who trav- 
els through the Nile valley under the protection of 
the Persians or the kings of his own race, and gath- 
ers his information from ignorant interpreters, that 
becomes henceforth the source of our knowledge. 

The monuments of the twenty-sixth dynasty, 
belonging to the seventh and sixth centuries B. c, 
are distinguished by a peculiar beauty — one might 
almost use the word elegance — in which we can- 
not fail to recognize foreign, that is, Greek, influ- 
ence. An extreme neatness of manipulation in the 
drawings and lines, in imitation of the best epochs 
of art in earlier times, serves for the instant recog- 
nition of the work of this age, the fineness of which 
often reminds us of the performances of a seal- 
engraver. There rests upon the work, which is 
executed in the hardest stone with a finish equal 
to metal-casting, a gentle and almost feminine ten- 
derness, which has impressed upon the imitations of 
living creatures the stamp of an incredible delicacy 
both of conception and execution. 

It should be mentioned that Darius I. conceived 
the bold plan of connecting the Red Sea with the 
13 



194 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Nile by a canal. The remains of a statue of the 
king, as well as several memorial stones covered 
with triplicate cuneiform inscriptions and with 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, which have been found 
near the line of the canal (north of Suez), place 
the fact beyond all doubt. One of the tablets is 
thus translated: 

'' Says Darius the king : ' I am a Persian ; with (the 
power of) Persia I conquered Egypt (Mudra^^a). I 
ordered this canal to be dug, from the river called Pirava 
(the Nile), which flows in Egypt, to the sea which comes 
out of Persia.* This canal was afterwards dug there, as 
I had commanded, and I said, " Go, and destroy half of 
the canal from Biraf to the coast." For so was my 
will.' " 

According to Strabo's statement, cited by Oppert,:|: 
Darius left off constructing the canal because some 

* This seems to apply to the Erythraean Sea, in the wide sense 
in which the name is used by Herodotus, including what is now 
called the Arabian Sea, with the Persian Gulf and Bed Sea, the 
latter having also the special name of the Arabian Gulf. — Ed. 

t May we perhaps understand by Bira the Egyptian Pi-ra, ' the 
[city of] the Sun,' namely, Heliopolis? 

{ Strabo, xvii., p. 804. Oppert's own words will be found inter- 
esting : **We can. read through the laconism of this inscription 
which, allowing for the position in which the king places himself, 
nevertheless establishes a failure. Darius wished to unite the 
Nile and the sea by a fresh-water canal ; to resume and finish the 
work which had been attributed first to Sesostris, and which Neco, 
the son of Psammetichus, had in vain tried to accomplish. But 
neither was Darius able to bring the work to a successful issue." 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 195 

had assured him that Egypt lay below the level of 
the Red Sea, and so the danger was threatened of 
seeing the whole land laid under water. 

Two dynasties followed, the twenty-ninth and 
thirtieth, at Mendes and Sebennytus, but the rec- 
ords are for the most part silent concerning them. 
The thirty-first dynasty was Persian, and consisted 
of three monarchs, whose reigns amounted only to 
eight years. In the year 332 b. c, Egypt was con- 
quered by Alexander the Great, and with this event 
the history as written by Dr. Brugsch concludes. 
The subsequent history is to be found in the clas- 
sical writers, and in various modern reproductions. 



196 TEE TRUE STORY OF 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE EXODUS AND THE EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS. 

A Discourse delivered on the Occasion of the International Con- 
gress of Orientalists in London, September 17, 1874. By 
Henry Brugsch-Bey, Delegate of his Highness Ismael /., 
Khedive of Egypt. Translated from the French Original, 



AD VER TI SEME NT 

TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 

The publication of this Memoir, which should 
have appeared a year ago, has been delayed by the 
absence of the author, while in official charge of an 
expedition into the interior of the Libyan Desert, of 
Egypt, and of Nubia. On returning from this jour- 
ney, he was able to take advantage of his stay in 
the eastern part of Lower Egypt, to examine the 
sites, and to verify the topographical and geograph- 
ical views, which form the subject of this Memoir. 

The author is happy to be able to state, that his 
new researches have contributed to prove, even to 
the smallest details, the conclusions which the 
papyri and the monuments compelled him to form 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 197 

Tvith regard to the topographical direction of the 
Exodus, and to the stations where the Hebrews 
halted, as related in Holy Scripture. 

In a special Memoir, which will form a complete 
chapter of my periodical publication, ' The Bible 
and the Monuments ' (Bibel und Denkmaeler)^ an- 
nounced several months since, the reader will find 
a collection of all the materials drawn from the 
monuments, which have enabled me to re-establish 
the route of the Jews after their departure from 
Egypt, and which prove incontestably that the la- 
bors of Messrs. Unruh and Schleiden * on the same 
subject were based on views as near the truth as 
was then possible. 

Notwithstanding the very hostile and sometimes 
not very Christian attacks which these new views 
have had to sustain on the part of several orthodox 
scholars, the author of this discourse ventures to 
affirm that the number of monumental indications 
is every day accumulating, and continually furnish- 
ing new proofs in favor of our discovery. Any one 
must certainly be blind who refuses to see the flood 
of light which the papyri and other Egyptian mon- 
uments are throwing upon the venerable records of 
Holy Scripture ; and, above all, there must needs be 

* See page 203 of the following Discourse. 



198 THE TRUE STORY OF 

a wilful mistaking of the first laws of criticism by 
those who wish to discover contradictions, which 
really exist only in the imagination of opponents. 

Note.- — In our translation, we follow Dr. Brugsch's 
orthography of the proper names, which, in this Memoir, 
he has adapted to the French language in which it was 
written, as, for the chief example, in the use of ou for 
the pure u used in his German text. 

We have not thought it necessary to encumber the 
pages with Notes referring to all the points already 
touched on in the History, and here collected into one 
focus of light thrown on the subject in hand. — Ed. 



PREFACE. 

The following pages contain the printed report 
of the Discourse which the delegate of his Highness 
Ismael I., Khedive of Egypt, had the honor to de- 
liver on the evening of September 17, 1874, at the 
International Congress of Orientalists in London. 

Although the necessarilj^ restricted limits of time, 
and the consideration due to an indulgent audience, 
did not permit him to develop all the details of a 
question, the solution of which has occupied him 
through a long course of years, the lively marks of 
satisfaction with which his hearers were pleased to 
honor him, and which were echoed by journals held 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 199 

in the highest esteem, impose on him the duty of 
presenting to the public the contents of this dis- 
course under the form of a Memoir drawn up on 
the programme of his subject. 

The more that his researches and investigations 
on the Exodus, founded on the study of the monu- 
ments, appear to present to the author results which 
are entirely opposed to the views hitherto adopted 
with regard to this part of the history of the He- 
brews, so much the more does he feel almost com- 
pelled to publish the materials which have supplied 
him with a foundation, and which have imperatively 
led him to present the departure of the Jews from 
Egypt in its true light. 

Those who are afraid of meeting in these new 
hypotheses attacks upon the statements of Holy 
Scripture, — from which may God preserve me, — or 
the suggestion of doubts relative to the sacred his- 
tory, may feel completely reassured. Far from les- 
sening the authority and the weight of the Books 
on which our religion is founded, the results at 
which the author of this Memoir has arrived — 
thanks to the authentic indications of the monu- 
ments — will serve, on the contrary, as testimonies 
to establish the supreme veracity of the Sacred 
Scriptures, and to prove the antiquity of their ori- 
gin and of their sources. 



200 THE TRUE STORY OF 

The author cannot conclude without fulfilling a 
sacred duty by thanking his august Master, in the 
name of science, for the numerous efforts which he 
has generously devoted to the development of his- 
torical studies and to the service of the monuments 
of his country. Having found in the person of our 
excellent and learned friend and colleague, Mariette 
Bey, one as devoted as he was qualified by skill and 
experience to carry out his enlightened ideas, his 
Highness the Khedive of Egypt has perfectly under- 
stood and accomplished the high mission which 
divine Providence has reserved for him, that of 
being the regenerator of Egypt, ancient as well as 
modern. H. B. 



THE MEMOIR. 

His Highness the Khedive of Egypt, Ismael 
Pacha, has granted me the honor of representing 
his country at the International Congress of Orien- 
talists in London. On this occasion, the enlight- 
ened prince, who has rendered so many services to 
the science I profess, has ordered me to express, in 
his name, to the illustrious members of the Con- 
gress, his most lively sympathy, and his sincere 
admiration for the invaluable labors with w^hich 
they have enriched science, in bringing back to life 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 201 

by their researches the remotest past of those happy 
countries of the East, which were the cradle of 
humanity and the centres of primitive civilization. 

If his Highness has deigned to fix his choice on 
me as his delegate to London, I owe this distinction 
less to my humble deserts than to the special char- 
acter of my latest researches on the subject of the 
history of the Hebrews in Egypt. 

Knowing the lively interest with which the Eng- 
lish world follows those discoveries, above all others, 
which have a bearing upon the venerable records of 
Holy Scripture, his Highness has charged me to lay 
before this honorable Congress the most conspicuous 
results of my studies, founded on the interpretation 
of the monuments of Egypt. 

In thus laying before you a page of the history of 
the Hebrews in Egypt, I would flatter myself with 
the hope that I may be able to reward your atten- 
tion, and thereby justify the high confidence with 
which his Highness has been pleased to honor me. 

I am to speak of the exodus of the Hebrews. 
But, before entering on my subject, I will take 
leave to make one observation. I wish to state that 
my discussion is based, on the one hand, upon the 
texts of Holy Scripture, in which I have not to 
change a single iota ; on the other hand, upon the 
Egyptian monumental inscriptions, explained ac- 



202 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

cording to the laws of a sound criticism, free from 
all bias of a fanciful character. 

If for almost twenty centuries, as I shall have 
occasion to prove, the translators and the interpre- 
ters of Holy Scripture have wrongly understood and 
rendered the geographical notions contained in that 
part of the biblical text which describes the sojourn 
of the Hebrews in Egypt, the error, most certainly, 
is not due to the sacred narrative, but to those 
who, unacquainted with the history and geography 
of the remote times which were contemporary with 
the events in the history of the Hebrews in Egypt, 
have labored to reconstruct, at any cost, the exodus 
of the Hebrews after the scale of their scanty knowl- 
edge, not to say, of their most complete ignorance. 

According to Holy Scripture, Moses, after having 
obtained from the pharaoh of his age permission to 
lead into the Desert the children of Israel, worn out 
with their hard servitude in building the two cities 
of Pitom and Ramses,* started with his people from 
the city of Ramses,f and arrived successively at the 
stations of Succoth J and Etham.§ At this last en- 

* Exod. i. 11. Observe that Rameses has already been men- 
tioned hy anticipation^ to mark the locality in which the children of 
Israel were settled when they came into Egypt : — Gen. xlvii. 11 : 
''And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them 
a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the 
land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded." — Ed. 

t Exod. xii. 37. J Ihid, and xiii. 20. § Ibid, xiii. 20. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 203 

campment he turned,* taking the direction towards 
Migdol and the sea — observe that there is not here 
a word about the ' Sea of sea-weed 'f (the Red Sea) 
— opposite to the ' entry of Khiroth,' J over against 
Baal-zephon. Then the Hebrews passed by way of 
the ' Sea of sea-weed ' (translated by the interpre- 
ters 'the Red Sea');§ they remained three days 
in the Desert without finding water ; || arrived at 
Marah, where the water was bitter ; ^ and at length 
encamped at Elim, a station with springs of sweet 
water and a little grove of date-palms.** 

The different opinions and different results, in 
tracing the direction of the march of the Hebrews, 
are just as many as the scholars who have attempted 
to reconstruct the route of the Hebrews from the 
data of Holy Scripture. But all these scholars, 
except only two (see p. 197), have agreed unani- 
mously that the passage through the Red Sea 
must be regarded as the most fixed point in their 
system. 

I dare not weary your patience by enumerating 

* Exod. xiv. 2. 

t 'Mer des Algues,' the translation of the Hebrew h^o-tT *the 
sea of souph^* which the LXX. always render by // equ^qU &uXa(r<xa 
(as also in the N. T., Acts vii. 36, Heb. xi. 29), except in Judges xi. 
16, where they preserve the Hebrew name in the form 2icp. — Ed. 

t Pi-hahiroth, Exod. xiv. 2. § Exod. xiii. 18, xv. 22. 

II Ibid, XV. 22. As to the name Shur, see below, p. 215. 
1 Ibid. XV. 23. ** Ibid. xv. 27. 



204 THE TRUE STORY OF 

all the routes reconstructed by these scholars, who 
had certainly the best intentions, and who lacked 
only one thing — but that very essential — the neces- 
sary knowledge of facts in the geography of ancient 
Egypt. Their general practice, in order to redis- 
cover the itinerary of the Hebrews, was to resort 
to the Greek and Roman geographers, who lived 
more than a thousand years after Moses, and to 
mark the stations of the Hebrews by the Greek or 
Latin names belonging to the geography of Egypt 
under the rule of the Ptolemies or the Caesars. 

If a happy chance had preserved that Manual of 
the Geography of Egypt, which, according to the 
texts engraved on the walls of the temple of Edfou, 
was deposited in the Library of that vast sanctuary 
of the god Horus, and which bore the title of ' The 
Book of the Towns situated in Egypt with a De- 
scription of all that relates to them,' we should have 
been relieved from all trouble in rediscovering the 
localities referred to in Holy Scripture. We should 
only have had to consult this book, to know of 
what we might be sure with regard to these bib- 
lical names. Unfortunately, this work has perished 
together with so man}^ other papyri, and science has 
once more to regret the loss of so important a work 
of Egyptian antiquity. But even this loss is not 
irreparable ! The monuments and the papyri, espe- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 205 

cially those of the dynasty of the Ramessids, contain 
thousands of texts and notices of a purely geograph- 
ical kind, making frequent allusion to topograpliical 
positions ; besides which, a very considerable num- 
ber of inscriptions, engraved on the walls of the 
temples, contain tables more or less extensive, which 
give us the most exact knowledge of the political 
divisions of Egypt, and the most complete lists of 
the departments of that country, accompanied by a 
host of the most curious details. 

Let me lay before you the scattered leaves of 
the lost book of which I have just spoken. Our 
purpose is to collect them carefully, to put them 
together in their relation to each other, to try to 
fill up the gaps, and finally to make out the list of 
them. 

After having been engaged on this work for 
twenty years, I have succeeded, at the beginning 
of this year, in reuniting the membra disjecta of the 
great Corpus Greographice of Egypt, which is com- 
posed, according to the Index of my collections, of 
a number exceeding three thousand six hundred 
geographical names. In the work of applying the 
laws of a sound and calm criticism to these rich, 
materials, without allowing myself to be enticed by 
an accidental resemblance of form in the foreign 
proper names, when compared with the Egyptian 



206 THE TRUE STORY OF 

names, I have undertaken to traverse Egypt through 
all its quarters, in order to obtain a knowledge of 
the ancient ground in its modern condition, and to 
satisfy myself, from my own eye-sight, of the changes 
which the surface of the soil has undergone in 
different parts of the country during the course of 
the past centuries. 

Having in this manner accomplished a labor which 
had the only drawback of being sometimes beyond 
my strength, but which has never worn out my 
patience, I have the honor of presenting its results, 
in the form of a summary, to this honorable Con- 
gress, as a tribute of respect and esteem due to the 
illustrious scholars here assembled. While, for my 
own part, I experience deep satisfaction at having 
in some sort reached the goal which I proposed 
to myself twenty years ago, it would prove, on the 
other hand, my highest recompense, to learn from 
your judgment that I have recovered a great part 
of the lost book of the Geography of Ancient Egypt. 
The application of the geographical results settled 
and laid down in this summary, which will form the 
special subject of the present meeting, will furnish 
you with a fair test of the importance of these 
results and of their value to historical science. 

Will you permit me to begin my exposition by a 
remark concerning the general topography of the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 207 

country which we are about to traverse, in order to 
discover and follow the traces of the Hebrews during 
their sojourn in Egypt? All the scholars, who have 
given attention to this subject, are agreed that this 
country lay on the eastern side of Lower Egypt, to 
the east of the ancient Pelusiac branch, which has 
disappeared from the map of modern Egypt, but the 
direction of which is clearly indicated by the position 
of the ruins of several great cities which stood on 
its banks in ancient times. Beginning from the 
south of the country in question, the city of Anu, 
the same which Holy Scripture designates by the 
name of On, identifies for us the position of the 
Heliopolite nome of the classic authors. 

Next, the mounds of Tell-Bast, near the modern 
village of Zagazig, enable us to fix the ancient site 
of the city of Pi-bast, a name which Holy Scripture 
has rendered by the very exact transcription of 
Pibeseth,* while the Greeks called it Bubastus. It 
was the chief city of the ancient Bubastite nome. 

Pursuing our course towards the north, the vast 
mounds, near a modern town called Qous by the 
Copts and Faqous by the Arabs, remove all doubt as 
to the site of the ancient city of Phacoussa, Pha- 
coussse, or Phacoussan, which, according to the 
Greek accounts, was regarded as the chief city of 

* Ezek. XXX. 17. 



208 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

the Arabian nome. It is the same place to which 
the monumental lists have given the appellation of 
Gosem, a name easily recognized in that of ^ Guesem 
of Arabia,' used by the Septuagint version as the 
geographical translation of the famous Land of 
Goshen.* 

Directly to the north, between the Arabian nome, 
with its capital Gosem, and the Mediterranean Sea, 
the monumental lists make known to us a district, 
the Egyptian name of which, ' the point of the 
north,' indicates at once its northerly position. The 
Greek writers call it the Nomos Sethroites, a word 
which seems to be derived from the appellation 
Set-ro-hatu, * the region of the river-mouths,' which 
the ancient Egyptians applied to this part of their 
country. While classical antiquity uses the name 
of Heracleopolis Parva to designate its chief town, 
the monumental lists cite the same place under the 
name of ' Pitom,' with the addition, ^ in the country 
of Sukot.' Here we at once see two names of great 
importance, which occur in Holy Scripture under 
the same forms, the Pithom and the Succoth of the 
Hebrews. 

Without dwelling, for the moment, on this curious 
discovery, I pass on to the last district of this region, 
situate in the neighborhood of the preceding one, 

* Gen. xlv. 10 ; xlvi. 34 ; xlvii. 4, 6, 27 ; Exod. viii. 22 ; ix. 2Q. 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 209 

between the Pelusiac and Tanitic branches of the 
Nile. The Egyptian monuments designate it by a 
compound name, which signifies ' the beginning of 
the Eastern country,' in complete agreement with 
its topographical position. Its chief town is named, 
sometimes Zoan, sometimes Pi-ramses, ' the city of 
Ramses.' Here again we have before us two names, 
which Holy Scripture has preserved perfectly in 
the two names, Zoan and Ramses, of one and the 
same Egyptian city. 

As the new geographical definitions which I have 
now set forth involve certain necessary conse- 
quences, I do not for a moment hesitate to declare 
that I willingly take upon myself the whole re- 
sponsibility, as much for the accuracy of the philo- 
logical part of my statement, as for the precision of 
the geographical sites which I have brought to your 
knowledge. 

After these remarks, I return to Pitom and Ram- 
ses. When you have entered, at Port Sa'id, from 
the Mediterranean into the maritime Canal of Suez, 
your vessel crosses the middle of a great plain, from 
one end to the other, before stopping on the south 
at the station called by the engineers of the canal 
El-Kantara. But during this transit you must give 
up all hope of being cheered by the view of those 
verdant and smiling meadows, those forests of date- 
14 



210 THE TRUE STORY OF 

palms and mulberry-trees, which give to the in- 
terior of Lower Egypt — covered with numerous 
villages and intersected with thousands of canals — 
the picturesque character of a real garden of God. 
This vast plain stretches out from the two sides 
of the maritime canal, without affording your eye, 
as it ranges over the vast space to the farthest 
bounds of the horizon, the least point to rest upon. 
It is a sea of sand, with an infinite number of islets 
covered with reeds and thorny plants, garnished 
with a sort of white efflorescence, which leads us 
to recognize the presence of salt water. In spite 
of the blue sky, the angel of death has spread his 
wings over this vast sad solitude, where the least 
sign of life seems an event. You but rarely meet 
with the tents of some poor Bedouins, who have 
wandered into this desert to seek food for their 
lean cattle. 

But the scene changes from the time when the 
Nile, in the two months of January and February, 
has begun to cover the lands of Lower Egypt with 
its waters. The vast plains of sand disappear be- 
neath the surface of immense lakes. The reeds 
and rushes, which form large thickets, shoot up 
wonderfully, and millions of water-birds, ranged 
along the banks of the lagoons or collected in flocks 
on the islets of the marsh, are busy fishing, dis- 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 211 

puting with man the rich prey of the waters. Then 
come the barks manned by the fishermen of Lake 
Menzaleh, who, during the two or three winter 
months, ply their calling vigorously, in order after- 
wards to sell the ' fassikh ' (salted fish) to the 
inhabitants of the Delta and of Upper Egypt. 

Such is the general character of this region, which 
I have traversed three times at different seasons 
of the year, in order to become acquainted with 
the peculiarities of its surface ; and such are the 
impressions which I have brought away from my 
repeated visits. These are the plains, now half 
desert, half lagoons and marshes, that correspond 
to the territory of the ancient district of the Se- 
throite nome, ' the point of the East,' according to 
the monuments, the capital of which was called 
Pi-tom, the city of Pithom of the Bible. 

In ancient times this district comprised both 
banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Delta, and 
extended on the western side as far as the eastern 
bank of the Tanitic branch. Marshes and lagoons, 
with a rich vegetation consisting of rushes and reeds, 
of the lotus and, above all, the papyrus plant, are 
met with towards the sea-shore: these are the 
places called by an Egyptian word, Athu, or by the 
foreign word Souf, that is, ' the marshes of papyrus ' 
of the Egyptian texts. There were also pools and 



212 THE TRUE STORY OF 

lakes, called by the Semitic name of Birkata, which 
reached to the neighborhood of Pitom. The dis- 
trict was traversed in all directions by canals, two 
of which were near the city of Pelusium ; each 
bearing a special name which recalls the use of a 
Semitic language spoken by the inhabitants of tlie 
district in question. The city of Pithom, identical 
with that of Heracleopolis Parva, the capital of the 
Sethroitic nome in the age of the Greeks and Ro- 
mans, was situate half-way on the great road from 
Pelusium to Tanis : and this indication, given on 
the authority of the itineraries, furnishes the sole 
means of fixing its position towards the frontier of 
the conterminous district of Tanis. 

The Egyptian texts give us evident and incon- 
testable proofs that the whole of this region, which 
formed the district of the Sethroite nome, was de- 
noted by the name of Suku, or Sukot. The foreign 
source of this designation is indicated by the mon- 
uments, and is proved by its relations with the 
Hebrew words sok^ sukhah^ in the plural sukkoth^ 
which bear the primary sense of ' tent.' There is 
nothing surprising in such an appellation, analogies 
to which are found in the names Scense Mandrorum, 
Scenee Veteranorum, Scense extra Gerasa, given by 
the ancients to three places situate in Egypt. In 
these names, then, the principal word, Scense, 'tents,' 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 213 

has the same signification as the Semitico-Egyptian 
word Sukot, which recalls to us the name of Suc- 
coth, given in Holy Scripture to the first station of 
the Hebrews when they had left the city of Ramses. 
This name of ' tents ' takes its origin from the en- 
campments of the Bedouin Arabs, who, with the 
permission of the pharaohs, had taken up their abode 
in the vast plains of the country of Succoth, and who, 
from the most remote periods of Egyptian history, 
had there preserved the manners, the customs, and 
the religious beliefs, peculiar to their race, and had 
spread the use of Semitic words, which were at 
length adopted officially by the Egyptian authori- 
ties and scribes. 

Thus it is that the greatest number of the proper 
names, used on the monuments and in the papyri 
to denote the towns, villages, and canals of the 
district of Succoth and of the adjacent nome of 
Tanis, are explained only by means of the vocabu- 
lary of the Semitic languages. Very often the ex- 
isting Egyptian names are changed in such a manner 
that the Semitic name contains the exact translation 
of the meaning of the Egj^ptian name. In this case 
the Semites have used the same method that the 
Greeks and Romans employed, namely, to render 
the proper names of the geography of Egypt by 



214 THE TRUE STORY OP 

translation into the corresponding words of their 
own language. In this process they went so far as 
to substitute the names of the divinities of classical 
mythology for those of the gods and divinities of 
the Egyptian pantheon. Hence it is that the classic 
authors give us names of cities such as Andron- 
polis (the ' city of men '), Gynsecon-polis (the ' city 
of women '), Leonton-polis (the ' city of lions '), 
Crocodilon-polis, Lycon-polis, Elephantine, that is, 
the cities of crocodiles, of wolves, of the elephant, 
&c., which exhibit actual translations of the cor- 
responding Egyptian names. And it is thus, also, 
that the j^ame authors speak of cities called Dios- 
polis, Hermo-polis, Helio-polis, Aphrodito-polis — 
that is to say, the cities of the gods Zeus, Hermes, 
Helios (the sun), and of the goddess Aphrodite — in 
order to render into Greek the Egyptian names 
No-Amon, ' the city of Amon,' Pi-thut, ' the city 
of Thut,' Pi-tom, ' the city of the sun-god Tom,' 
Pi Hathor, ' the city of the goddess Hathor.' The 
Hebrews did just the same: and thus there was, at 
the entrance of the road leading to Palestine, near 
the lake Sirbonis, a small fortification, to which, as 
early as the time of the nineteenth dynasty, the 
Egyptians gave the name of Anbu, that is, ' the 
wall' or 'fence,' a name, which the Greeks trans- 
lated according to their custom, calling it Gerrhon 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 215 

(t6 riQQov^^ or, in the plural, Gerrha (rd jTe^^w).* 
The Hebrews likewise rendered the meaning of the 
Egyptian name by a translation, designating the 
military post on the Egyptian frontier by the name 
of Shur, which in their language signifies exactly 
the same as the word Anbu in Egyptian and the 
word Gerrhon in Greek, namely, ' the wall.' This 
Shur is the very place which is mentioned in Holy 
Scripture, not only as a frontier post between Egypt 
and Palestine, but also as the place whose name 
was given to the northern part of the desert on that 
side of Egypt. 

It is in the same manner that the Hebrew word 
Souph, — whose meaning of ' sea-weed, reeds, papy- 
rus-plant ' is certified by the dictionaries of the 
Hebrew language, and which was used to denote 
a town situate on the Egyptian frontier, at the 
opposite end of the great Pharaonic road which led 
towards the south of the Dead Sea, besides giving 
its name to the Yam Souph, ' the sea of sea-weed,' 
— this name, I say, contains simply the translation 
of the Egyptian word Athu, which again signifies 
the same as the Hebrew word Souph, that is, ' sea- 
weed, or the papyrus plant,' and which was applied 

* There was a Chaldaean town of the same na.me on the Euphra- 
tes, and another in Arabia; and a district T^f'ooog, or r^oooi, on the 
Borysthenes, in European Sarmatia; aU in positions where we 
should expect to find frontier fortresses. — Ed. 



216 THE TRUE STORY OF 

as a general term to denote all the marshes and 
lagoons of Lower Egypt, which are characterized 
by their rich vegetation, consisting of papyrus and 
of rushes. The Egyptians, on their part, knew so 
well the meaning of the Hebrew word, that they 
frequently adopted the foreign name of Souph, in- 
stead of the word Athu in their own tonoue, to 
denote not onl}^ the name of the City of Weeds, but 
also the Sea of Weeds, the Yam Souph, which we 
shall meet with further on. 

After these remarks of a philological character, 
which have appeared to me indispensable for the 
understanding of my subject, I return to the city of 
Pitom, the chief place of the region of Sukot, about 
which the monuments furnish us with some very 
curious pieces of information. I will begin with the 
divinity worshipped at Pitom and in the district of 
Sukot. Although the lists of the nomes, as well as 
the Egyptian texts, expressly designate the sun-god 
Tom — the same who had splendid temples at On 
or Heliopolis — as the tutelar deity of Sukot, they 
nevertheless add, that the god Tom represents solely 
the Egyptian type corresponding to the divinity of 
Pitom, who is called by the name of ankh, and sur- 
named ' the o-reat srod.' The word ankh, which is of 
Egyptian origin, signifies 'life,' or ^he who lives,' 
'the Living One.' This is the only case, in the 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 217 

Egyptian texts, of the occurrence of such a name 
for a god as seems to exclude the notion of idolatry. 
And in fact, if we take into consideration the 
presence of families of the Semitic race, who have 
resided in Egypt at all periods of her history, — 
including the nation of the Hebrews, — we cannot 
refuse to recognize in this divine name the trace of 
a religious tradition, which has been preserved even 
in the monumental records of the Egyptians. I 
dare not decide the question, whether the god 'He 
who Lives' of the Egyptian text is identical with 
the Jehovah of the Hebrews. At all events, every- 
thing tends to this belief, when we remember that 
the name of Jehovah contains the same meaning 
as the Egyptian word ankh, ' He who lives.' Ac- 
cording to the monuments, this god, in whose honor 
a great feast was celebrated on the 13th day of 
the second month of summer, was served, not by 
priests, like the other divinities of the Egyptian 
pantheon, but by two young girls, sisters, who bore 
the title of honor of Ur-ti, that is, ' the two queens.' 
A serpent, to whom the Egyptian texts give the 
epithet of ' the magnificent, splendid,' was regarded 
as the living symbol of the god of Pitom. It bore 
the name of Kerch, that is, ' the smooth ; ' (compare 
Kep^^e, calvus, nbn^ smooth, bald.) And this ser- 
pent, again, transports us into the camp of the 



218 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

children of Israel in the wilderness ; it recalls to us 
the brazen serpent of Moses, to which the Hebrews 
offered the perfumes of incense until the time 
when king Hezekiah decreed the abolition of this 
ancient serpent worship.* 

The relations of the Hebrews with Pitom and 
Sukot do not, however, end here. 

According to the indications of the monuments, 
the town of Pitom, the chief place of the district of 
Sukot, had an appellation which it owed to the pres- 
ence and existence of its god ankh, ' He who lives,' 
or ' the Living One,' and which, in the terms of the 
Egyptian language, was pronounced p-aa-ankh, 
'the habitation, or the dwelling-place, of the god 
ankh.' In conformity with this name, the district 
of Sukot was otherwise called p-u-nt-paa-ankh, ' the 
district of the dwelling-place of the Living One.' 
Add to this monumental name the Egyptian word 
za, the well-known designation of the governor of a 
city or a district, and you will have the title Za-p- 
n-nt-p-aa-ankh, ' the governor of the district of the 
dwelling-place of the Living One,' which a Greek 
of the time of the Ptolemies would have rendered 
by the translation, 'the nomarch of the Sethroite 
nome.' 

And now turn to Holy Scripture : it will inform 

* Numbers xxi. 9 ; 2 Kings xviii. 4, 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 219 

you that the pharaoh of Joseph honored his vizier 
with the long title of Zaphnatpaneakh, which, letter 
for letter, answers exactly to the long Egyptian 
word, the analysis of which I have just laid before 
you. More than this, when Joseph made himself 
known to his astonished brethren, he said to them : * 
'' I am Joseph your brother ; it is not you that sent 
me into Egypt, it is God. It is God who estab- 
lished me as privy councillor to Pharaoh, and as 
lord over all his house." The first title, in Hebrew, 
is written, Ab le-Pharaoh, in which the translators, 
from the LXX. downwards, recognized the Hebrew 
word Ab, ' father ; ' but we learn from the Egyptian 
texts that, far from being Hebrew, the title of Ab 
en pirao designates the first minister or officer, who 
was attached exclusively to the household of the 
pharaoh. Several of the precious historical papyri 
of the time of the nineteenth dj^nasty, now in the 
British Museum, the texts of which consist of sim- 
ple letters and communications written by scribes 
and officers of the court, relate to these Ab en pirao, 
these superior officers of the pharaoh, whose high 
rank is clearlj^ indicated by the respectful style of 
these scribes of inferior rank. 

All these observations, the number of which I 

* Gen. xlv. 4, 8. We follow Dr. Brugsch's translation, which 
the reader can, of course, compare \7ith the Authorized Ver- 
sion. — Ed. 



220 THE TRUE STORY OF 

could easily extend by other examples, will serve to 
demonstrate, in general, the presence of a foreign 
race on the soil of Sukot, and, especially, to give 
incontestable proofs of the close relations between 
the Egyptians and the Hebrews. By what we may 
call the international use of words belonging to 
their languages, the Egyptian texts furnish us with 
direct proofs which certify the existence of foreign 
peoples in the district of Pitom. 

The Egyptian texts, with the famous papyrus of 
the British Museum at their head, tell us continu- 
ally of the Hiru-pitu, or Egyptian officers, who were 
charged with the oversight of these foreign popu- 
lations residing in the region of Sukot. These 
same texts make known to us the Adon (a word 
entirely Semitic in its origin) or superior chiefs of 
Sukot, magistrates who served as intermediaries in 
the relations of the Egyptian authorities with these 
populations. This service, which was not always 
of a peaceable character, was supported by a body 
of police (the Mazaiou), whose commander (the 
Ser) was chosen from among the great personages 
of the pharaonic court. The Egyptian garrisons 
of two fortresses constructed on the frontiers of the 
nome of Sukot watphed the entrance and departure 
of all foreigners into and out of that territory. 
The first, palled Khptam (that is, tl^e fortress), of 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 221 

Sukot, was situate near the town of Pelusium. It 
guarded the entrance into the district of Sukot 
from the side of Arabia. The other, called by a 
Semitic name Segor, or Segol, that is, ' the barrier,' 
of Sukot, prevented foreigners from passing the 
frontier on the southern side and setting foot on the 
territory of the district adjacent to Tanis-Ramses. 
Thus the two forts were placed at the two ends of 
the great road which traversed the plain of Sukot 
in the midst of its lakes, marshes, and canals. The 
description which a Roman author, Pliny, has left 
us of the nature of the roads of this country, 
may serve to prove that, as early as the begin- 
ning of our era, the great road of the district of 
Sukot was somewhat like the track of the pres- 
ent day, by which the Bedouins of the country and 
their families alone are able to travel. As might 
be easily imagined beforehand, the marshy condi- 
tion of Sukot scarcely permitted the foundation of 
towns in the interior of this district. Hence the 
Egyptian texts, in agreement with the notices of 
tlie classic writers, speak only of towns and forts 
on the frontier. Allow me to direct your attention 
especially to a fortress situate at the east of the 
nome of Sukot, on the border of the Arabian desert, 
in the neighborhood of a fresh-water lake, and called 
by its Semitic name, which was adopted by the 



222 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Egyptians, Migdol, that is, 'tlie tower,' and by its 
purely Egyptian name, Samout. The site of this 
place is fixed by the position of Tell-es-Semout, a 
modern name given to some heaps of rums, which 
at once recalls the ancient appellation of Samout. 
As early as the age of the eighteenth dynasty, about 
two hundred years before the time of Moses, this 
place w^as regarded as the most northern point of 
Eg3"pt, just as on the southern border the city of 
Elephantine, or Souan (the Assouan of our time), 
was considered the most southern point of the 
country. When king Amenophis IV. summoned 
all the workmen of the country, from the city of 
Elephantine to Samout (Migdol), the Egyptian text, 
which has preserved this information for us, says 
precisely the same as does the prophet Ezekiel, in 
predicting to the Egyptians of his time the devasta- 
tion of their country 'from Migdol as far as Seve 
(Assouan) on the frontier of the land of Kush.' * 
When I observe that this Migdol is the only place 
of that name w^hich I have met with in the (Egyp- 
tian) geographical texts, among more than three 
thousand geographical proper names, the proba- 

* Ezek. xxix. 10; xxx. 6. In our Authorized Version, as so 
frequently happens, the right transhition is given in the margin^ 
* from Migdol to Syene,' the text being wrong, and in fact non- 
sense : ' from the tower of Syene to the border of Ethiopia ' is like 
saying * from Berwick to the frontier of Scotland.' — Ed. 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 228 

bility at once follows, that the Migdol of the 
prophet Ezekiel is not different from the Migdol 
of the Exodus. 

It is time, to leave the district of Snkot, and to 
follow by way of Pitom the ancient road which led 
to Zoan-Tanis, the capital of the frontier district, a 
distance of twenty-two Roman miles, according to 
the ancient itineraries. A sandy plain, as vast as 
it is dreary, called at this day San in remembrance 
of the ancient name of Zoan, and covered with 
gigantic ruins of columns, pillars, sphinxes, stelae, 
and stones of buildings, — all these fragments being 
cut in the hardest material from the granite of 
Syene, — shows you the position of that city of 
Tanis, to which the Egyptian texts and the classic 
authors are agreed in giving the epithet of ' a great 
and splendid city of Egypt.' According to the geo- 
graphical inscriptions, the Egyptians gave to this 
plain, of which Tanis was the centre, the name of 
Sokhot Zoan, 'the plain of Zoan,' the origin of 
which name is traced back as far as the age of Ram- 
ses II. The author of the 78th Psalm makes use 
in two verses (12 and 43) of precisely the same 
phrase in reminding the Hebrews of his time of 
the miracles which God wrought before their ances- 
tors ' the children of Israel in Egypt, in the plain of 
Zoan.'* This remarkable agreement is not acciden- 



224 THE TRUE STORY OF 

tal, for the knowledge of the Hebrews concerning 
all that related to Tanis is proved by the note of an 
annalist, likewise reported in Holy Scripture, that 
the city of Hebron was built seven years before the 
foundation of Zoan.* 

If the name of Zoan — which the Egyptians, as 
well as the Hebrews, gave to this great city, and 
which means ' a station where beasts of burden are 
laden before starting on a journey ' — is of a purely 
Semitic origin, two other names, which are likewise 
given to the same place and are inscribed on the 
monuments discovered at San, reveal their deriva- 
tion from the Egyptian language. These are the 
names of Zor and Pi-ramses. The first, Zor — 
sometimes Zoru in the plural — has the meaning 
of the ' strong ' place, or places, which agrees with 
the nature of the country lying towards the east 
and defended by a great number of- fortifications, 
of which Tanis was one of the strongest.! 

The second appellation, Pi-ramses, '- the city of 
Ramses,' dates from the time of the second king of 

* Numb. xiii. 22, Eespecting the probable connection in the 
origin of the cities, which seems to be implied in this mention of 
them together, see the Students 'Ancient History of the East, 
p. 115.— Ed. 

t The Egyptian name of Mazor, applied to this country, shows 
us the origin of the Hebrew word Mazor, which is given in Holy 
Scripture to the same region. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 225 

that name, the founder of all those edifices whose 
gigantic ruins still astonish the traveller of our day. 
This is the new city, built close to the ancient Zor, 
and so often mentioned in the papyri of the British 
Museum, at which Ramses II. erected sanctuaries 
and temples in honor of a circle of divinities, called 
' the gods of Ramses.' The king caused himself also 
to be honored with a religious worship, and the 
texts of the later age make mention of the 'god- 
king Ramses, surnamed the very valiant.' I cannot 
omit to quote the name of the high-priests who pre- 
sided over the different services of religion in the 
sanctuaries of Zor-Ramses. According to the Egyp- 
tian texts these priests bore the name of Khar-toh, 
that is, ' the warrior.' The origin of this appella- 
tion, which seems strange for persons so peaceful, 
is satisfactorily explained by the Egyptian myths 
concerning the divinities of the city of Ramses. But 
the interest attached to this title arises, not so much 
from these religious legends, as from the fact that 
Holy Scripture designates by the same name the 
priests whom Pharaoh summoned to imitate the 
miracles wrought by Moses. The interpreters of 
Holy Scripture are agreed that the name of Khartu- 
mim, given in the Bible to the Egyptian magicians, 
in spite of its Hebrew complexion, is evidently de- 
rived from an Egyptian word. And here we have 
15 



226 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the word Khartot, which supplies us not only with • 
the means of discovering the real meaning of Khar- 
tumim, but also with a new proof that the scene of 
the interviews between Pharaoh and Moses is laid 
in the city of Zoan-Ramses. 

The Egyptian records, especially the papyri, 
abound in dates relating to the building of the 
new city and sanctuaries of Ramses, and to the 
labors in stone and in bricks with which the work- 
men were overburdened to make them complete 
their task quickly. These Egyptian documents fur- 
nish details so precise and specific on this sort of 
work, that it is impossible not to recognize in them 
the most evident connection with the ' hard bond- 
age ' and ' rigorous service ' of the Hebrews on the 
occasion of building certain edifices at Pitom and 
Ramses.* Any one must be blind who refuses to 
see the light which is beginning to shine into the 
darkness of thirty centuries, and which enables us 
to transfer to their true places the events which 
the good Fathers of the Church — excellent Chris-, 
tians, indeed, but ill acquainted with antiquity — 
would have confounded till the end of time, had 
not the monuments of the Khedive and the treas- 
ures of the British Museum come in good time to 
our help. 

To alter the position of the city of Ramses, in 

* Exod. i. 11, 14. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 227 

defiance of the evidences of the Egyptian monu- 
ments, would involve the introduction of irrepara- 
ble confusion into the geographical order of the 
nomes and cities of Egypt. 

It was from this city of Zoan-Ramses that, about 
the year 1600 before our era, and in the twenty-sec- 
ond year of his glorious reign, the great conqueror, 
Thutmes III., set out at the head of his army to 
attack the land of Canaan. It was this city into 
which, in the fifth year of his reign, Ramses II. 
made his triumphal entry, after having won his vic- 
tories over the people of the Khetians, and in which, 
sixteen years later, the same pharaoh concluded the 
treaty of peace and alliance with the chief of that 
people. It was this city whose great plains served 
as the field for the cavalry and troops of the kings 
to practise their warlike manoeuvres. It was this 
city, whose harbor was filled with Egyptian and 
Phoenician vessels, which carried on the commerce 
between Egypt and Syria. It is this city which 
the Egj'ptian texts designate expressly as the end 
of the proper Egyptian territory and the beginning 
of that of the foreigner. It is this city, of which an 
Egyptian poet has left us the beautiful description 
contained in a papj^rus of tlie British Museum. 
It is the same city where the Ramessids loved to 
reside, in order to receive foreign embassies and 



228 ^^^ TRUE STORY OF 

to give orders to the functionaries of their court. 
This is the very city where the children of Israel 
experienced the rigors of a long and oppressive 
slavery, where Moses wrought his miracles in the 
presence of the pharaoh of his age ; and it was from 
this same city that the Hebrews set out, to quit the 
fertile land of Egypt. 

We will now follow them, stage by stage. 

Travellers by land, who were leaving Ramses to 
pursue their journey towards the east, had two 
roads that they might follow. One of these led, 
in a northeasterly direction, from Ramses to Pelu- 
sium ; passing half-way through the city of Pitom, 
situate at an equal distance from Ramses and from 
Pelusium. This is that bad road, described by 
Pliny, across the lagoons, the marshes, and a whole 
system of canals of the region of Sukot. According 
to what the monuments tell us, this road was not 
very much frequented. It was used by travellers 
without baggage, while the pharaohs, accompanied 
by their horses, chariots, and troops, preferred the 
great Pharaonic road, the Sikkeh-es-soultanieh of 
the Orientals. 

This last contained four stations, each separated 
from the next by a day's march. These were 
Ramses, ' the barrier ' of Sukot, Khetam, and Mig- 
dol. We already know the names and position of 



TBE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 229 

these stations, with the exception of the third, called 
Khetam. This word Khetam, which the Hebrews 
have rendered by Etham, has the general sense of 
'fortress,' as I have proved before. To distinguish 
it from other Khetams which existed in Egj'pt, and 
especially from the Khetam of the province of Sukot, 
situate near Pelusium, the Egyptian texts very often 
add to the word the explanatory remark, ' which is 
situate in the province of Zor,' that is, of Tanis- 
Ramses. 

There is not the least doubt as to the position of 
this important place, of which we even posaess a 
drawing shown on a monument of S ethos I. at Kar- 
nak. According to this drawing, the strong place 
of Khetam was situate on both banks of a river 
(the Pelusiac branch of the Nile), and the two 
opposite parts of the fortress were joined by a great 
bridge, a Qanthareh (or Kantara), as it is called 
in Arabic. At a little distance from these two for- 
tresses, and behind them, is found the inhabited 
town, called in Egyptian Tabenet. While this 
name at once recalls the name of Daphnae (^dgo^at), 
given by the Greek historian Herodotus * to an 

* Herod, ii. 30 : where all the three frontier fortresses and their 
objects are mentioned, viz. on the S., the N.E., and the N.W. : 
ini ^[^afA^LTixov ^aadiog q)vkaxai xaTedTcxaap IV js * Elscpavjivri 
noh ngog Aldionojv xal ^v ^dicpvria l tt^gl IItjIov cr iriaL ^XXtj 
d^ ngbg 'Aqa^Ltav ical 2vQiOP, icalep Magir^ ngog Av^vrjg ^lli}. 



230 THE TRUE STORY OF 

Egyptian fortress, the following observations will 
result in furnishing proofs of the greatest certainty 
for the identification now proposed. Herodotus 
speaks, in the first place, of Daphnae, in the plural, 
in agreement with the existence of the two for- 
tresses according to the Egyptian drawing. He 
gives them the surname of ' the Pelusian ' on ac- 
count of the position of the fortresses in question, 
on the two opposite banks of the Pelusiac branch. 
Herodotus says expressly, that at his day (as in 
former times) there was in this Pelusian Daphnse 
a garrison which guarded the entrance into Egypt 
on the side of Arabia and Syria. The ruins of 
these two forts, standing over -against one another, 
still exist in our day ; and the name of Tell-De- 
fenneh, which they bear, at once recalls the Egyptian 
name of Tabenet and the name of Daphnse men- 
tioned by Herodotus. The remembrance of the 
bridge, the Qanthareh, which joined the two forts 
of Khetam-Daphnae, has been likewise preserved 
to our time, for the name of Guisr-el-Qanthareh, 
' the dike of the bridge,' which is now applied to 
a place situate a little distance east of Khetam, 
must be regarded as the last reminiscence of the 
only passage, which, in ancient times, allowed a trav- 
eller to enter Egypt dry-shod from the east. 
Having thus re-discovered, by means of their 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 231 

ancient names and their modern positions, the four 
geographical points which Holy Scripture calls 
Ramses, Succoth, Etham, and Migdol, situate at a 
day's distance from one another, I am quite ready 
to answer the question, whether the Egyptian texts 
prove to us the existence of a road which led from 
Ramses to Migdol, through these intermediate 
stations of Succoth and Ethajn. Once more the 
answer is in the highest degree affirniative. 

A happy chance — rather let us say, Divine Prov- 
idence — has preserved, in one of the papyri of the 
British Museum, the most precious memorial of the 
epoch contemporary with the sojourn of the Israel- 
ites in Egypt. This is a simple letter, written, more 
than thirty centuries before our time, by the hand 
of an Egyptian scribe, to report his journey from 
the royal palace at Ramses, which was occasioned 
by the flight of two domestics. 



u 



Thus (he says) I set out from the hall of the royal 
palace on the 9th daj^ of the 3d month of summer towards 
evening, in pursuit of the two domestics. Then I ar- 
rived at the barrier of Sukot on the 10th day of the 
same month. I was informed that they (that is, the two 
fugitives) had decided to go b}^ the southern route. On 
the 12th daj" I arrived at Khetam. There I received 
news that the grooms who came from the country [the 
lagoons of Suf, said] that the fugitives had got be3^ond 
the region of the Wall to the north of the Migdol of King 
Seti Meneptah." 



232 THE TRUE STORY OF 

If you will substitute, in this precious letter, for 
the mention of the two domestics the name of 
Moses and the Hebrews, and put in place of the 
scribe who pursued the two fugitives the pharaoh 
in person following the traces of the children of 
Israel, you will have the exact description of the 
march of the Hebrews related in Egyptian terms. 

Exactly as the Hebrews, according to the biblical 
narrative, started on the 6th day of the 1st month 
from the city of Ramses,* so our scribe, on the 
9th day of the 11th month of the Egj^ptian year, 
quits the palace of Ramses to go in pursuit of the 
two fugitives. 

Exactly as the Hebrews arrive at Succoth on the 
day following their departure,! so the Egyptian 
enters Sukot the day after he set out from Ramses. 

Exactly as the Hebrews stop at Etham, on the 
third day from their leaving Ramses, J so the Egyp- 
tian scribe, on the third day of his journey, arrives 
at Khetam, where the desert begins. 

Exactly as the two fugitives, pursued by the 
scribe, who dares no longer to continue his route in 
the desert, had taken the northerly direction to- 
wards Migdol and the part called in Egyptian ' the 
Wall,' in Greek ^ Gerrhon,' in the Bible 'Shur,' — 
all names of the same meaning, — so the Hebrews 

* Exod. xii. 37. f Ihid, % Exod. xiii. 20. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 233 

* turned,' as Holy Scripture says,* to enter on the 
flats of the lake Sirbonis. 

To add a single word to these topographical com- 
parisons would only lessen their value. Truth is 
simple ; it needs no long demonstrations. 

According to the indications of the monuments, 
in agreement with what the classical accounts tell 
us, the Egyptian road led from Migdol towards the 
Mediterranean Sea, as far as the Wall of Gerrhon 
(the Shur of the Bible), situate at the (western) 
extremity of the lake Sirbonis. This latter, which 
was well known to the ancients, had again long 
fallen out of remembrance, and even in the last 
century a French traveller in Egypt naively ob- 
served that ' to speak of the lake Sirbon is speaking 
Greek to the Arabs.' f Divided from the Mediter- 
ranean by a long tongue of land which, in ancient 
times, formed the only road from Egypt to Pales- 
tine, this lake, or rather this lagoon, covered with 
a luxuriant vegetation of reeds and papyrus, but 
in our days almost entirely dried up, concealed un- 
expected dangers owing to the nature of its shores 
and the presence of those deadly abysses of which 
a classic author has left us the following descrip- 
tion : J 

* Exod. xiv. 2. 

t Le Mas crier, Description de VEgypte, 1735, p. 104. 

t Diodorus, i. 30. 



234 THE TRUE STORY OF 

" On the eastern side, Egypt is protected in 
part by the Nile, in part by the desert and marshy 
plains known under the name of Gulfs (or Pits, 
Ttt ^dgaOga'). For between Coele-Syria and Egypt 
there is a lake, of very narrow width, but of a 
wonderful depth, and extending in length about 
two hundred stadia (twenty geographical miles), 
which is called Sirbonis ; and it exposes the trav- 
eller approaching it unawares to unforeseen dan- 
gers. For its basin being very narrow like a riband, 
and surrounded on all sides by great banks of sand, 
when south winds blow for some time, a quantity 
of sand is drifted over it. This sand hides the 
sheet of water from the sight, and confuses the 
appearance of the lake with the dry land, so that 
they are indistinguishable. From which cause many 
have been swallowed up with their luhole armies 
through unacquaintance with the nature of the spot 
and through having mistaken the road. For as 
the traveller advances gradually, the sand gives 
way under his feet, and, as if of malignant purpose, 
deceives those who have ventured on it, till at 
length, suspecting w^hat is about to happen, they 
try to help themselves when there is no longer anj^ 
means of escaping safe. For a man drawn in by 
the swamp can neither swim, the movements of his 
body being hampered by the mud, nor can he get 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 235 

out, there being no solid support to raise himself 
on. The water and sand being so mixed that the 
nature of both is changed, the place can neither 
be forded nor crossed in boats. Thus those who 
are caught in these places are drawn to the bottom 
of the abyss, having no resource to help them- 
selves, as the banks of sand sink with them. Such 
is the nature of these plains, with which the name 
of gulfs (^§(XQadQa) agrccs perfectly.""^ 

Thus the Hebrews, on approaching this tongue 
of land in a north-easterly direction, found them- 
selves in face of the gulfs, or, in the language of 
the Egyptian texts, in face of the Khirot (this is 

* In this description and a subsequent passage (see p. 239) 
Diodorus is generally thought to have exaggerated the fate which 
befell a part, at least, of the Persian army of Artaxerxes Ochus in 
B. c. 350 ; but the discoveries and reasonings of Dr. Brugsch give 
a far more striking significance to the passage and to Milton's 
image founded on it (^Paradise Lost, ii. 592-594) : 

** A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk" 

As to the diflPerent manner of the catastrophe, we may observe 
that the description of Diodorus throws a* new light on the descrip- 
tion in Exodus. Pharaoh thought he had caught the Israelites 
* entangled ' between the sea, the desert, and the bog (Exod. xiv. 
2) ; but when they were led safely through by the guiding pillar 
of fire, which was turned into darkness for their pursuers, it was 
the Egyptians that became entangled on the treacherous surface, 
through which * their chariots dragged heavily' (verse 25) before 
the whelming wave borne in from the Mediterranean completed 
their destruction. — Ed. 



236 THE TRUE STORY OF 

the ancient word which applies exactly to the gulfs 
of weedy lakes), near the cite of Gerrhon. We 
can now perfectly understand the biblical term 
Pihakhiroth,* a word which literally signifies ' the 
entrance to the gulfs,' in agreement with the geo- 
graphical situation. This indication is finally fixed 
with precision by another place, named Baal-zephon, 
for f '' The Lord spake unto Moses saying, Speak 
to the children of Israel, that they turn and en- 
camp before Pihakhiroth, between Migdol and the 
sea, opposite to (lit. ' in the face of ') Baal-zephon ; 
ye shall encamp opposite to it, by the sea." 

The name of Baal-zephon, which (as the eminent 
Egyptologist Mr. Goodwin has discovered) is met 
with in one of the papyri of the British Museum 
under its Egyptian orthography, Baali-Zapouna, 
denotes a divinity whose attribute is not far to 
seek. According to the extremely curious indica- 
tions furnished by the Egyptian texts on this point, 
the god Baal-zephon, the ' Lord of the North,' 
represented under his Semitic name the Egyptian 
god Amon, the great bird-catcher who frequents 
the lagoons, the lord of the northern districts and 
especially of the marshes, to whom the inscriptions 
expressly give the title of Lord of the Khirot, that 
is ' gulfs ' of the lagoons of papyrus. The Greeks, 

* Exod. xiv. 2. t Ibid. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL, 237 

after their manner, compared him with one of their 
correspoLfding divine tj^pes, and thus it was that 
the god Amon of the lagoons was represented, from 
the time of the visits made to this region by the 
Greeks, under the new form of a ' Zeus Kasios 
(Casius).' The geographical epithet of Casius, given 
to this Zeus, is explained by the Semitico-Egyptian 
name of the region where his temple was built. 
This is Hazi, or Hazion, that is, 'the land of the 
asylum,' a name which perfectly suits the position 
of a sanctuary situate at the most advanced point 
of the Egyptian frontiers towards the east. 

It was on this narrow tongue of land, bounded 
on the one side by the Mediterranean Sea, on the 
other by the lagoons of weeds, between the entrance 
to the Khiroth, or the gulfs, on the west, and the 
sanctuary of Baal-zephon, on the east, that the great 
catastrophe took place. I may repeat what I have 
already said upon this subject in another place. 

After the Hebrews, marching on foot, had cleared 
the flats which extend between the Mediterranean 
Sea and the lake Sirbonis, a great wave took by 
surprise the Egyptian cavalry and the captains of 
the war-chariots, who pursued the Hebrews. Ham- 
pered in their movements by their frightened horses 
and their disordered chariots, these captains and 
cavaliers suffered what, in the course of history, 



238 THE TRUE STORY OF 

has occasionally befallen not only simple travellers, 
but whole armies. True, the miracle then ceases 
to be a miracle ; but, let us avow it with full sin- 
cerity, the Providence of God still maintains its 
place and authority.* 

When, in the first century of our era, the geog- 
rapher Strabo, a thoughtful man and a good ob-* 
server, was travelling in Egypt, he made the follow- 
ing entry in his journal : 

" At the time when I was staying at Alexandria 
the sea rose so high about Pelusium and Mount 
Casius that it inundated the land, and made the 
mountain an island, so that the road, which leads 
past it to Phoenicia, became practicable for vessels." 
(Strabo, i. p. 58.) 

* Dr. Brugsch has here made a perfectly gratuitous concession, 
and fallen into the common error of confounding a miracle with a 
special providence. The essence of the miracle consists in the 
attestation of the Divine presence with His messenger by the time 
and circumstances of an act, which may nevertheless be in itself 
an application of what we call the laws of nature to a particular 
case. It shows the Creator, whose word established the laws of 
nature — Q He spake and it was done. He commanded and it 
stood fast ')— repeating the word through his prophet or minister, 
by which those laws are applied to a special purpose and occasion. 
Thus here the wind and sea waves are the natural instruments : 
their use, at the will of God and the signal given by Moses, con-- 
stitute the miracle, without which all becomes unmeaning. — Ed. 

The important fact is that the destruction of the Egyptian host is 
shown to have been brought about by the operation of natural 
forces. This being established, it does not matter whether theolo- 
gians call it a miracle, or an instance of divine interposition. — U. 



THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 239 

Another event of the same kind is related by an 
ancient historian. Diodorus, speaking of a campaign 
of the Persian king Artaxerxes against Egypt, men- 
tion3 a catastroplie which befell his army in the 
same place : * 

" When the king of Persia," he says, " had gath- 
ered all his forces, he led them against Egypt. But 
coming upon the great lake, about which are the 
places called the gulfs, he lost a part of his army, 
because he was unaware of the nature of that 
region." 

Without intending to make the least allusion to 
the passage of the Hebrews, these authors inform 
us incidentally of historical facts, which are in per- 
fect agreement with all that the sacred books tell 
us of the passage of the Hebrews across the sea. 

Far from diminishing the value of the sacred 

records on the subject of the departure of the He- 
«t 

brews out of Egypt, the Egyptian monuments, on 
the faith of which we are compelled to change our 
ideas respecting the passage of the Red Sea — tra- 
ditions cherished from our infancy — the Egyptian 
monuments, I say, contribute rather to furnish the 
most striking proofs of the veracity of the biblical 
narratives, and thus to reassure weak and sceptical 
minds of the supreme authority and the authenticity 
of the sacred books. 

* Diodorus, xvi. 46. 



240 TEE TRUE STORY OF 

If, during the course of eighteen centuries, the 
interpreters have misunderstood and mistranslated 
the geographical notions contained in Holy Scrip- 
ture, the error is certainly not due to the sacred his- 
tory, but to those who, without knowledge of the 
history and geography of ancient times, have at- 
tempted the task of reconstructing the Exodus of 
the Hebrews, at any cost, on the level of their own 
imperfect comprehension. 

Permit me still one last word on the sequel of the 
march of the Hebrews after their passage across the 
gulfs. The sacred books tell us:* ''Then Moses 
led the Israelites from the sea of weeds, and they 
went out into the desert of Shur, and having gone 
three days in the desert, they found no water. 
From thence they came to Marah, but they could 
not drink of the waters of Marah, because they 
were bitter. Wherefore the place was called Ma- 
rah (bitter). Then they came to Elim, where were 
twelve wells of water and seventy palm-trees ; and 
they encamped there by the waters." f 

All these indications agree — as might have been 
expected beforehand — with our new views on the 
route of the Israelites. After reaching the. Egyp- 
tian fortress near the sanctuary of the god Baal- 
zephon, which stood on one of the heights of Mount 
Casius, the Hebrews found in front of them the road 

* Exod. XV. 22, 23. t Exod. xv. 27. 



TEE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 241 

which led from Egypt to the land of the Philistines. 
According to the command of God, forbidding them 
to follow this route, "^ they turned southwards, and 
thus came to the desert of Shur. This desert of 
' the Wall ' — so called from a place named in 
Egyptian ' the Wall,' and in Greek ' Gerrhon,' a 
word which likewise signifies ' the Wall,' as I have 
shown above — lay to the east of the two districts 
of Pitom and Ramses. There was in this desert a 
road, but little frequented, towards the Gulf of 
Suez (as we now call it), a road which the Roman 
writer has characterized as ' rugged with mountains 
and wanting in water-springs.' f 

The bitter waters, at the place called Marah, are 
recognized in the Bitter Lakes of the Isthmus of 
Suez. Elim is the place which the Egyptian mon- 
uments designate by the name of Aa-lim or Tent- 
lim, that is ' the town of fish,' situate near the Gulf 
of Suez, in a northerly direction. 

When the Jews arrived at Elim, the words of 
Holy Scripture — "But God caused the people to 
make a circuit by the way of the wilderness, to- 
wards the Sea of Weeds "J — were definitively ac- 
complished. 

* Exod. xiii. 17. 

t Plin. H. iV. vi. 33 : * asperum montibus et inops aquarum.' 

J Exod. xiii. 18. 

16 



242 THE EXODUS OF ISRAEL. 

To follow the Hebrews, stage by stage, till their 
arrival at Mount Sinai, is not our present task, nor 
within the scope of this Conference. I will only 
say that the Egyptian monuments contain all the 
materials necessary for the recovery of their route, 
and for the identification of the Hebrew names of 
the different stations with their corresponding names 
in Egyptian.* 

* See the mention, in the prefixed 'Advertisement' of the 
Memoir on this subject in Dr. Brugsch's Bihel und Denkmaeler, 



APPENDIX. 



THE TABLE OF ABYDUS. 

List of the Kings, with their Epochs, who ruled in Egypt, 
FROM the First Pharaoh, Mena, to the End of the Thirty- 
first Dynasty. 

Their names and order, down to the Pharaoh Ramses II. (about 
B. c. 1350), are founded on the List of Kings in the Table of 
Abydus (Nos. 1-77). 

The numbers added, to mark their Epochs, refer to the succes- 
sion of generations assumed in our work; but these, from the 
year 666 onwards, are superseded by the regnal years actually 
proved. 

First Dynasty : of Thinis. b. c. 

1. Mena, 4400 

2. Tota, 4$66 

3. Atoth, 4333 

4. Ata, 4300 

5. Sapti, 4266 

6. Mirbapen, 4233 

7. (Semempses), 4200 

8. Qebeh, . . ' 4166 

Second Dynasty : of Thinis. 

9. Buzau, 4133 

10. Kakau, 4100 

11. Bainnuter, 4066 

12. Utnas, 4033 

13. Seuta, 4000 

243 



244 APPENDIX. 

Third Dynasty: of Memphis. b. c. 

14. Zazai, 3966 

15. Nebka, 3933 

16. Toser [sa], ... . . . . 3900 

17. Tota, 3866 

18. Setes, 3833 

19. Noferkara, 3800 

20. Senoferu ...... 3766 

Fourth Dynasty: of Memphis. 

21. Khufu, . 3733 

22. Ratatf, 3700 

23. Khafra, 3666 

24. Menkara, . . . . . . 3683 

25. Shepseskaf, 3600 

Fifth Dynasty : of Elephantine. 

26. Uskaf, 3566 

27. Sahura, 3533 

28. Keka, 3500 

29. Noferfra, 3466 

30. Ranuser, 3433 

31. Menkauhor, 3400 

32. Tatkara, 3366 

33. Unas, 3333 

Sixth Dynasty: of Memphis. 

34. Uskara, 3300 

35. Teta, . . . . . . . 3266 

36. Merira Pepi, . . . . . . 3233 

37. Merenra, . 3200 

38. Noferkara, 3166 

39. Merenra Zafemsaf, . . . . . 3133 

Seventh and Ninth Dynasties. 

40. Nuterkara, ...... 3100 

41. Menkara, 3066 

42. Noferkara, . . . . . . 3033 



43. 
44. 
45. 
46. 
47. 
48. 
49. 
50. 
61. 
62. 
63. 
54. 
65. 
56. 
57. 
58. 



APPENDIX, 



Noferkara Nebi, 
Tatkara Shema, . 
Noferkara Khontu, . 
Merenhor, 
Senoferka, 

Ranka, . . . . 
Noferkara Terel, 
Noferkahor, . 
Noferkara Pepiseneb, 
Noferkara Annu, . 
. . . kaura, 
Noferkaura, . 
Noferkauhor, . 
Noferarkara, . 
Nebkherra Mentuhotep, 
Sankhkara, . 



Twelfth Dynasty: of Thebes 
69. Amenemhat I., 
Usurtasen I., 
Amenemhat II., 
Usurtasen II., 
Usurtasen III., 
Amenemhat III., . 
Amenemhat IV., 
A gap, which comprises more than 
and during which the time of 
kings falls. In all, five dynast 

XVII.) 



60. 
61. 
62. 
63. 
64. 
65. 



245 



Eighteenth Dynasty ; 
QQ, Aahmes, 

67. Amenhotep I., . 

68. Thutmes I., 

69. Thutmes II. 

70. Thutmes III., 

71. Amenhotep II,, 

72. Thutmes IV., 

73. Amenhotep III,, 



OF Thebes 



B. c. 

3000 
2966 
2933 
2900 
2866 
2833 
2800 
2766 
2733 
2700 
2mQ 
2633 
2600 
2566 
2533 
2500 



the 



. 2466 
2433 

. 2400 

2366 

. 2333 

2300 

. 2266 

500 years, "] 2233 

Hyksos- I to 



les 






(xiii.— 1733 
J (circ.) 



1700 
1666 
1633 

1600 

1566 
1533 
1500 



246 APPENDIX. 

B. C. 

74. Horemhib, 1466 

(One generation of heretic kings), . . 1433 

Nineteenth Dynasty : of Thebes. 

75. Ramessu I., 1400 

76. Mineptahl. Seti I., .... 1366 

77. Miamun I. Ramessu II., . . . . 1333 
Mineptah II. Hotephima, , , . 1300 
Seti II. Mineptahlll., . . . . 1266 
Setnakht Merer Miamun II., . . 1233 

Twentieth Dynasty : of Thebes. 

Ramessu III. Haq-On, 1200 

Ramessu IV., . . . , . 

Ramessu VI., . • . . . 

Meritum, . . . . . . . \ 1166 

Ramessu VII., . . ... 

Ramessu VIII,, ...... 

Ramessu IX.— XII., 1133 

Twenty-first Dynasty: of Thebes and Tanis. 

Hirhor, 1100 

Piankhi, 1066 

Pinotem I., ]033 

Pisebkhanl., 1000 

Twenty-second Dynasty: of Bubastus. 

Shashanql., 966 

Usarkon I., 933 

Takelothl., ...... 900 

Usarkon II., ^QQ 

Shashanqll., ...... 833 

Takeloth II., . . . . . . .800 

Twenty-third Dynasty : op Tanis and Thebes. 

Usarkon . . . , . • . . 766 

Twenty-fourth Dynasty: of Sais and Memphis. 
Bokenranef, .,,.,,, 733 



APPENDIX. 24tl 

Twenty-fifth Dynasty : the Ethiopians. b. c. 

Shabak, ^ ^ 

Shabatak, / ^^^ 

Taharaqa, . 693 

Twenty-sixth Dynasty: of Sais. 

Psamethik I., 666 

Neku, 612 

Psamethik II., ...... 596 

Uahabra, ....... 591 

Aahmes, 572 

Psamethik III., 528 



Twenty-seventh Dynasty : the Persians. 

Cambyses, . 527 

Darius I., 521 

Xerxes I., 4:SQ 

Artaxerxes, 465 

Xerxes II., 425 

Sogdianus, — 

Darius II., 424 

Twenty-eighth Dynasty. 

(Amyrtaeus.) 

Twenty-ninth Dynasty: of Mendes. 

Naifaurot I., 399 

Hagar, 393 

Psamut, 380 

Naifaurot II., 379 

Thirtieth Dynasty : of Sebennytus. 

ISTakhthorib, 378 

Ziho, 360 

Nahktnebef, 358 



248 APPENDIX. 



Thirty-first Dynasty : the Persians. b. c. 

Ochus, 340 

Arses, 338 

Darius III., 336 

Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, 332 



OBELISKS OF THUTMES III. AT HELIOPOLIS. 

(Note to page 139.) 

One of the obelisks set up by Thutmes III. at Heliopolis has a 
special interest for English readers. Besides the largest pair 
mentioned by Dr. Brugsch, now at Constantinople and Eome, a 
smaller pair were transported to Alexandria under Tiberius, and 
set up in front of Caesar's temple, where they obtained the well- 
known name of ' Cleopatra's Needles.' One of them still stands 
in its place ; the other, after lying prostrate for centuries in the 
sand, was presented to England by Mehemet Ali Pasha in 1820, as 
a memorial of the famous Egyptian campaign of 1801. But the 
intention of transporting it to England was only fulfilled in 1878 
by the munificence of the eminent surgeon, Mr. Erasmus Wilson, 
and the persevering enterprise of Mr. John Dixon, C. E., and it is 
now erected on the Thames Embankment. Its height is sixty- 
eight feet five inches (less three and one half inches cut off from 
the broken end to give the base an even surface). The hieroglyphs 
on two of its faces express the titles of Thutmes III. ; on the other 
two, Ramses II. has added his own; illustrating Dr. Brugsch's 
remark on the official pomp, devoid of historical information, 
which is the usual substance of the inscriptions on Egyptian 
obelisks. The inscriptions have been translated by Dr. Birch; 
and a full account of the obelisk, from its cutting out of the 
quarries at Syene to its adventurous voyage across the Bay of 
Biscay, has been published by Mr. Erasmus Wilson, and in Mr. 
Dixon's paper, illustrated with plans, in the 'Proceedings of the 
Royal United Service Institution.' The very similar inscriptions 



APPENDIX. 249 

of Thutmes III. and Ramses II. on the other obelisk, still stand- 
ing at Alexandria, are translated by M. Chabas in the * Records 
of the Past,' Vol. X. pp. 21, foil. — Ed. 



PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE TO WHICH 
REFERENCE IS MADE. 

And Joseph was brought down to Egypt : and Potiphar, an of- 
ficer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him 
of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down 
thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous 
man ; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And 
his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord 
made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found 
grace in his sight, and he served him : and he made him overseer 
over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it 
came to pass from the time that lie had made him overseer in his 
house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyp- 
tian's house for Joseph's sake ; and the blessing of the Lord was 
upon all that he had in the house, and in the field. And he left 
all that he had in Joseph's hand ; and he knew not aught he had, 
save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly per- 
son, and well favored. — Gen. xxxix. 1-6. 

And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the 
land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and 
put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine 
linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and he made him to 
ride in the second chariot which he had : and they cried before 
him, Bow the knee : and he made him ruler over all the land of 
Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and with- 
out thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of 
Egypt. And Pharaoh called Joseph's name, Zaphnath-paaneah ; 
and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest 
of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt. — Gen, 
xli. 41-45. 



250 APPENDIX. 

They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land 
are we come : for thy servants have no pasture for their flocks ; 
for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan : now therefore, we 
pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. 

And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them 
a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the 
land of Eameses, as Pharaoli had commanded. 

And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the countr}' of Goshen, 
and they had possessions therein, and grew, and nmltiplied ex- 
ceedingly. — Gen. xlvii. 4, 11, 27. 

Now there arose up a now king over Egypt which knew not 
Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, tlie people of the 
children of Israel are more and miglitier than we : Come on, let 
us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, 
that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our ene- 
mies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. 
Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with 
their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom 
and Eaamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they mul- 
tiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children 
of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve 
with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, 
in mortar, and in brick, and in all numner of service in the field : 
all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor. — 
Ex. i. 8-14. 

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the 
river ; and her ^ "lidens walked along by the river's side : and when 
she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 
And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the 
babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is 
one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's 
daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew wo- 
men, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's 
daughter said to her. Go. And the maid went and called the 
child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her. Take this 
child away and nurse it for me, and I will give thee th}- wages. 
And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, 
and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her 



APPENDIX, 251 

son. And she called his name Moses : and she said, Because I 
drew him out of the water. — Ex. ii. 5-10. 

And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, 
about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside chil- 
dren. — Ex. xii. 37. 

And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in 
Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. — Ex. xiii. 20. 

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto the children 
of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between 
Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zeplion : before it shall ye 
encamp by the sea. 

But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and char- 
iots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook 
them en-camping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal- 
zephon. — Ex. xiv. 1, 2, 9. 

So Moses brought Israel from the Bed Sea, and they went out 
into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went three days in the wil- 
derness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, 
they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter : 
therefore the name of it was called Marah. 

And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and 
threescore and ten palm trees : and they encamped there by the 
waters. —Ex. xv. 22, 23, 27. 



NOTES. 



■•o*- 



The body of this work was written in German, and the conclud- 
ing Memoir in French. The translation was begun by the late 
Henry Danby Seymour, F.R.G.S., and was completed by Philip 
Smith, B.A. Most of the foot-notes are by Dr. Brugsch; those 
by the latter of the translators are signed " Ed." A few have been 
added by the editor of the present compilation. 

The chief difficulty that presents itself to the English reader is 
the confusion of names arising from the different modes of repre- 
senting the ancient symbols of sounds in modern letters. Dr. 
Brugsch has adopted a mode of spelling which is unusual, and is 
not uniform. He has followed the German use of letters generally, 
though in the Memoir his method is often like the French, In his 
reproduction of Egyptian names, a has the broad sound as in fa- 
ther, e the sound of a, i the sound of e, and o is generally long. 
Consonants are used without much system. K or Kh and Q (with- 
out the u following) appear to be equivalents. /S'has generally the 
sound of Sh at the beginning of a word. The liquids I and r are 
interchangeable ; so, sometimes, are u and v. Thus we have Ribu 
or Libu; Ruten or Luten; Khar, Char, Khal or Chal; Nahar or 
Nahal ; Rutennu or Lutennu ; Khetam or Chetam ; Boolaq or Bou- 
lak; Kheta, Khita, Khiti or Kiti; Avaris, Auaris or Awaris. So, 
also, Pi-tom, Pithom or Pitum: Serbonis or Sirbonis. The use 
of Q and q is noticeable, as in Qebeh and Saqqarah. 

Page 46. Horus, a god, fabled as an ancestor of pharaohs, son 
of Osiris and Isis. 

P. 87. Ramessides, Ramesids, the pharaohs that bore the name 
of Kamses or Ramessu. 

253 



254 NOTES, 

Pp. 97, 98. The note by Dr. Brugsch on the pronunciation of 
Khufu (Shufu, Shoofoo) shows how difficult it is to understand 
the resemblance of modern to ancient sounds. 

P. 117. '^ I gained a hand^' means that having killed an enemy 
he cut off one of his hands as a trophy. 

P. 119. Kush, Nubia. 

P. 133. The title ZapJinatpaneakJi is translated or '^guessed" 
by one of the principal commentators as " revealer of the secret " ! 

P. 139. ScarabcBus, literally a beetle, a favorite form of golden 
ornament. 

P. 154. Ra appears to have been the sun-god of the east, or 
morning; Tom, or Toom, the god of the west, or the setting sun. 

P. 184. Dr. Brugsch had already inserted this document on 
page 82. 

Mineptah was the second title of Seti I. ; and his son and suc- 
cessor, who is the only one that wore the name as his leading title, 
is called sometimes Mineptah I. and sometimes II. The name 
signifies ''the friend of Ptah." 

P. 205. Membra disjecta, the scattered parts of the body of 
Egyptian geography. 

P. 225. Khartoh, in French would have the same sound as 
Khartot on page 226. 

P. 228. " The bad road" would of course be impassable at the 
time of the inundation. 

The termination hotep signifies servant. The name Amon-hotep 
(servant of Amon) was called Amunoph by the Greeks, as Aahmes 
was called Amosis, and Seti, Sethos or Sethosis. 

Semites (descendants of Shem), a branch of the human family 
that includes the Jews, Arabs, and a few other peoples. 

Fi and No signify a town or city, as Pi-Ramses, No-Amon. 

Tell, a mound (Arabic), indicating the site of a ruined city. 

Nome (Greek, Nomos), a district. 



NOTES. 255 

Cartouche, a royal escutcheon, or coat of arms, consisting of 
symbols arranged in oval form, and graven upon the public works 
erected in the reign of the pharaoh for the time being. Sometimes 
a single oval was used ; sometimes two or more (or even six) were 
sculptured. Tliis discovery, made by ChampoUion, has been of the 
utmost importance in determining the chronology of Egypt. 

Asebi, Cyprus. 

Khiia, Canaan. 

Nahai'ain, Mesopotamia. 

The gods of Egypt were many. The chief were 

(1) Amon (corresponding to Zeus), universally venerated. 

(2) Ptah, Patah (Former, Creator), worshipped at Memphis for 
the most part. 

(3) Osiris, fabled to have been of the human race, afterwards 
deified, and become the Judge of All. 

(4) Isis, the wife of Osiris. 

(5) Ilorus, son of Osiris and Isis. 

(6) Thut, scribe of the gods. 

(7) Bast or Pasht, goddess of lust (cat-headed), whose seat was 
at Bubastus. 

A further enumeration is unnecessary here. 

The Book of the Dead, referred to by Dr. Brugsch, is a manual 
of morals, observances, and worship. It is of unknown antiquity, 
but portions of it have been found in the grave-clothes of persons 
who died before the building of the pyramids. Its circulation was 
universal among lettered Egyptians, and a number of more or less 
perfect copies are extant. 

In the 125th chapter is described the appearance of the soul be- 
fore the tribunal of Osiris. Each one of the forty-two inquisitors 
puts a question to the individual on trial. Some questions refer to 
matters of local importance and the internal regulations of the 
kingdom, but as a whole they embrace the moral code. We quote 
some of the declarations : 

*^ Placer of Spirits, Lord of Truth, is thy name . . . 

I have not privily done evil against mankind. 



256 NOTES. 

I have not told falsehoods. 
I have not done what is hateful to the gods. 
I have not murdered. 
I have not smitten men privily. 
I have not stolen. 
I have not been idle. 
I have not committed adultery. 
I have not corrupted women or men. 
I have not polluted myself. 
I have not blasphemed a god. 
I have not falsified measures. 
I have not cheated in the weight of the balance. 
I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to 
the naked." 



INDEX. 



PAGES 

AAHMES 116,121,129 

Aah-hotep, Queen, her jewels 122 

About, Edmoud 11 

Abraham 13 

Abydus, Table of 44,46 

Agriculture • •••.... 33 

Alphabet 10 

Amenhotep, architect and sculptor 153 

Amenhotep III 153-156 

Amenhotep IV. See Khunaten. 

Ameniritis, Queen 192 

Amu, the 26, 61, 62 

Apopi, King . • . • 108 

Art 11,36,60,193 

Architecture 10, 193 

Asia, the birthplace • 22 

Assyrian conquest 189 

Auaris 70, 96, 107 

Baal-Zephon * , 236 

Baba, tomb of 128 

Beni Hassan, tombs of 61 

Book of the Dead 40 

Cambyses • 192 

Cephrenes. See Kafra, 

Char, or Chal, the * 89, 91 

Cheops. See Khufu. 

Chetam, See Khetam. 

Commentators, ignorance of • 204 

Darius 194 

Delta, the 209 e^ seg. 

Egypt, geography of 29, 207 

Life in 34 

Art 36, 193 

17 257 



258 INDEX. 

Egypt, Schools 38 

Morals 40 

Oppression , 41 

Chronology 42 

Assyrian Conquest of , 189 

Persian Conquest of 192 

Egyptians, their origin 22 

Elim 241 

Ethiopia 25, 192 

Exodus, the 202, 203, 228, 231 

Gerrhon 214, 215 

Greeks as pupils 15 

Their art in Egypt 193 

Hebrew poetry, prototype of 142-146, 172 

Scriptures 13 

Heretic King. See Khunaten, 

Herodotus on Lake Sirbonis 234 

Hirhor 189 

Horemhib, 165 

Hyksos, the 93, 95, 97-100, 105, 107, 115, 125 

Israelites in Egypt 19 

As Laborers 149, 226 

Dates of 126 

Jehovah, the name 217 

Joseph, place in chronology 126, 127, 132 

Temptation 134 

Honors 137,219 

Josephus 95 

Kafra, Khafra 54 

Kem, Kemi, Khemi v 28 

Kheta, the 27 

Khetam 69, 220, 229 

Khufu 51, 97, 98 (note) 

Khunaten 14, 159, 163 

lietter-writer, an Egyptian 176 

Living One, the 216 

Marah 241 

Manetho 9,42,43,95,98 

Mariette-Bey 9, 45 

Memnon, statues of 154 

Memphis 47 



/ 



INDEX. 259 

Mena 10, 42, 47 

Menkaura 54 

Menzaleb, Lake 67, 93 

Merris, Princess 182 

Migdol 72, 222 

Mineptah 1 85, 86 

Mineptah II 183, 185-188 

Mceris, Lake 61 

Moses -. 179 

Naval Battle of Aahmes 116 

Nimrod 189 

Nomes • . 31 

Novel, an Egyptian . 134 

Nub, King 66, 108, 126 

Osiris 70 

Patah-hotep, Prince, an author • 56 

Penta-ur, poem of 172 

Pharaoh 48,49 

The Biblical 183 

Drowning of his host 237 

Phoenician gods 79 

People 89, 91, 101 

Pl-Kamses. See Zoan, 

Pi-tom, Pithom 68 

Poem in honor of Thutmes III 142 

Potiphar's wife, story of 134 

Prayer of Khunaten 14, 162 

Psametik 1 192 

Pyramids, the, 51-55 

Ramses, the town. See Zoan. 

Ramses II. the Great J69-172, 178, 181 

Ramses III 188 

Ra-Sekenen 109 

Red Sea, the 239 

Reedy Sea, the 233, 241 

Rutennu, the 103, 104 

Seir 84 

Semitic subjects and neighbors 64 e^ seq. 

Words 77 

Idols 78 

Reckoning of Time 81 

Relations with 123 

In Canaan 140 



260 INDEX. 

Senoferu . . • 49 

Sirbonis, Lake, 233 

Sethroitic nome 69 

Setil 168 

Shashank < : . 189 

Shasu, the. {See also Semitic neighbors.) 82, 97, 98 

Shepherd Kings. See Hyksos. 

Shur 240 

Sphinx the 53 

Strabo, his relation 238 

Suez Canal of Darius . . 193 

The modern 209 

Sukot, Succoth 68,212 

Taa III .....: 121 

Tanis. See Zoan. 

Thebes 59 

Thutmes III 139, 142, 150 

Tini, Thinis 47 

Tombs, historical pictures in 61, 128, 148 

Zoan, Zoar, Zor 65, 85, 87, 106, 124, 175, 180. 185, 223, 227 



APPENDIX. 

Table of Abydus 243-248 

Obelisks of Thutmes III. at Heliopolis 248 

Passages of Scripture to which reference is made 249-251 

Notes 253-256 



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